


Entwined Hearts and Other Glands

by SilkCut



Series: Snapshots [9]
Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: Confessions, F/M, Friendship, Love Geometry, M/M, Nostalgia, Revenge, Secrets, Self-Love, Wishes, across the seasons, beginnings and endings, making amends, palpable tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-05-16 10:34:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 46,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5825149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilkCut/pseuds/SilkCut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kimihiro Watanuki, wish granter and dream seer, has not only committed grievous acts against his loved ones but also abused the limitations of his power, darkening his magic into something twisted and cruel. Now that he has seen the error of his ways, Watanuki begins to make amends so he can cancel out his misdeeds, and he receives help from the most unexpected allies. </p><p>Meanwhile, Shizuka Doumeki and Kohane Tsuyuri enter a romantic relationship which has sustained them for several months until Watanuki is ready to face both of them again. But the affair between Doumeki and Kohane is filled with tribulations and complicated secrets, and things are only made more difficult when a certain admirer of Kohane attempts to get close to her and unravel everything. </p><p>Yet the most prodigious dilemma is the fact that Doumeki and Watanuki are still in love, but they also care enough about Kohane that they are willing to put their feelings aside out of respect; whereas Kohane herself ultimately discovers that there are valuable things that one must never comprise, even for the sake of love.</p><p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4518810">Frequency</a></p><p>
  <b>
    <i>[ON LONG HIATUS]</i>
  </b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [selene_ermingarde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/selene_ermingarde/gifts).



> I can't believe I'm still writing _Snapshots_ a year later, and was even able to finish all the eight installments so far! Now I've been writing fanfiction online since I was seventeen and it's officially a decade now (I have two FFNet accounts to prove it), and I have NEVER completed a story unless they are oneshots. Like most aspiring writers, I struggle with multi-chaptered stories and often abandon a few of them when writer's block gets to me. But when you hit your twenties and have also joined a student publication in college and became one of its associate editors--well, you learn to manage your time and discipline yourself when writing fiction. I have another ongoing story in another fandom for _Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire_ which lacks ONE FINAL CHAPTER, and please do wish me the best of luck in accomplishing it alongside this ongoing baby.
> 
> In any case, I just want to say that the xxxHoLic manga means a lot to me, particularly Watanuki's character, issues and relationships. Writing these stories for this series has been cathartic and provided me the much needed insight concerning my own fuck-ups and insecurities. I also met lovely people along the way like **CumberbatchCritter, Lacerate, selene_ermingarde** and **Arisprite** whom I all love and cherish because it's hitsuzen. These four dorks have nurtured me, inspired me and delighted me with their unique perspectives and opinions regarding xxxHoLic and all its mysterious trappings. I guess you can say they're my own CLAMP girls! Thanks for the conversations and fangasms, you nerds!
> 
> I dedicate this sequel to selene_ermingarde who is the biggest fan of _Frequency_ that it's almost pathological XD I also want to give a shout-out to Summer (CumberbatchCritter) WHO SHOULD NEVER STOP WRITING _Cardinal Directions_ , to Arisprite WHO SHOULD MARRY ME TO HER RESTAURANT AU ONCE AND FOR ALL--and, of course, my dearest, most beloved Lacertae (Soy-chan) who is--MY GUARDIAN ANGEL and my own Syaoran because she tirelessly affirms that I'm a human being and I deserve love.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watanuki begins to chronicle his life to restore some balance to what was lost and what is yet to be gained.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 **en·twine**  
/ənˈtwīn/

  
to twist something together or around something;

closely connected or unable to be separated

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**482: Those Who Do Not Remember the Past**

* * *

 

 

 

**April 3, 2012**

 

 

_I think I turned twenty-six two days ago—but I can’t be sure. My age has always eluded me, given the strange circumstances of my birth. There’s also the very simple fact that I have no memories of my childhood, or anything before meeting Yuuko-san and the wish shop. I only celebrated my birthday for the first time back in high school because Yuuko-san insisted and wanted to make a big deal out of it. Himawari-chan and Doumeki came along as well, so I suppose spending time with all of them under cherry blossom trees wasn’t that bad. I think I even enjoyed myself in spite of the chore of doing all the work in preparing the foods. I also got gifts from Himawari-chan and Doumeki, and then it was also the first time I saw Yuuko-san filled with regret and sadness because she couldn’t give me anything for my birthday._

_I could never forget the way she looked at me then._

_And I could never forget her. I refuse to forget her._

_Is this an interesting thing to write as an entry in one’s journal? Because I don’t know. I never really had diaries before. It was Syaoran-kun who suggested (and who later on imposed) that I should keep record of my daily activities inside the shop, citing that writing down what happens to me even if said events are minimal and banal is already a worthwhile mental exercise. Diaries will serve as my memory banks, Syaoran explained, in case there is something I don’t want to forget. I could look through these notebooks again and find what I’m looking for once the years of my life turn into decades. By then, it will get harder for my finite brain to recall most things. Memories are such fleeting things for someone like me after all._ _So I think Syaoran raises very good points on the subject, so I took him on his offer and now I’m writing down everything—every painstaking detail—with the goal of preserving what little life I have as I continue to stay confined in this place, a routine made only bearable by the irregular visits from unsuspecting customers so I can listen to their troubles and grant their wishes._

_Yuuko-san must have diaries somewhere too. I told Syaoran that I want to find them but he said I should focus more on myself first—on telling my story—before I even attempt to read hers. I haven’t told him about the letters yet. Or Clow Reed. But I think I’m going to because I can’t lie to Syaoran. He’s the only person in this plane of existence who…I don’t know how I feel about him, to be honest. There is just no word for it and even if there was, the definition is lost to me. He and I are of the same soul, aren’t we? We’re connected because my existence was consequential to his own; and yet, at the same time, we’re different. I’m my own person as he is his own person. But I can’t help but feel like the only reason why I feel so much better now—why I feel whole—was because he’s here—my other self. Syaoran told me he plans to stay for a few more days with me, and his companions Fay-san and Kurogane-san complied easily which was nice, if not a little embarrassing. I’m grateful for their company._

_Also, White Mokona just interrupted my writing a few minutes ago to give me a kiss. She (I’m not sure if it’s a she but I think now she is) said that Black Mokona would have wanted to give me a kiss to for my birthday too if only he was awake._

_I need him to wake up. I have missed him more than I could have ever imagined. He was kind to me even when he was being cruel. Besides, it’s not as if I didn’t deserve to hear those things from him. I was…I think I just…fell apart. The worst thing was I thought I had it together, that I had it all figured out, but I was merely blinded by arrogance and compelled by insecurities to inflict pain and suffering because I never wanted to be in this position of power, especially to wield a power I’m far too afraid to comprehend—let alone claim as my own and use it an instrument to make things better for other people. When I was told that being selfish can be acceptable if it meant learning to value oneself and his needs, I decided to be selfish for the first time but I got carried away and became very greedy instead. I thought I was owed things. I felt entitled. And now that I have sown and reaped the destruction of being that kind of selfish, and ended up hurting Kohane-chan and…_

_I don’t know how to talk about him in this diary, mostly because I feel ashamed to write about the heinous things I said and did when I forced him out of the shop and out of my life. What sucks is that I knew that I meant the things I said to him in that heat of the moment. He made me so angry and jealous; made me so paranoid and vulnerable and crazy! But now I know I shouldn’t blame him for these bitter feelings he inspired because I should be the one in control of my own emotions. I was also the one who reacted harshly and attacked him, showing him no mercy at all. I was so afraid of the friendship he shares with Kohane-chan, and so consumed by the fear that he was going to leave me that I had to get ahead of him and reject him first. It’s so hard to explain how I feel about the man. All I know was that I’m not supposed to feel this way about him—especially not as intensely as I do now. I never wanted any of it. I remember loathing him to the point where I literally tried to kick him the first time we met. I couldn’t stand being next to him and yet he’s there and I apparently just got used to him… And now—now I can’t even think of a reason why he shouldn’t be here with me—why I made him leave in the first place._

_To say that I miss him seems like a disservice. Every part of my body and my mind screams to be with him. And yes, I do believe it’s so dramatic and disgusting to even write these down but it’s…how I feel. And what I feel is that I could die from missing Doumeki. And I know that’s impossible, given what I traded when I agreed to stay in the shop—but that’s how it feels. It feels like dying. Not seeing Doumeki feels like dying—not talking to him feels like nothing else matters—not cooking his stupid favorites for him feels like I lost some purpose—to no longer sit by his side in silence every night—or get a chance to kiss him again or fuck him—because I miss how he tasted and smelled and sounded when we made love that first time and I wish it won’t be the last and I’m going crazy just remembering how well we fit. And now I’m not able to say his name aloud or hear him say my name aloud as he looks at me like I’m…like…I’ve always been worthy…like I ever deserved to be loved like that_

_I can’t write these things anymore the more I talk about them the harder it gets to swallow this awful heavy lump on my throat that I think I might choke on any minute now my eyes burn too I can’t see what I’m writing anymore and I don’t want to mess up the words with my tears and I can’t_

* * *

 

 

**April 4, 2012**

_Syaoran-kun and I shared the bed again last night. It should make me feel weird to do that since I don’t think I have ever had anyone beside me as I slept. Not counting that time when Doumeki and I had sex, of course. (I really shouldn’t be talking about that again. I have to stop talking about Doumeki from now on.)_

_Anyway, I think I’ve always slept alone and maybe in the past I had someone with me when I sleep, but I’m never going to remember it anyway so it’s pointless to contemplate about that. So like I said, Syaoran and I never actually talked about sleeping in the same bed because that would have been awkward. There was just this—quiet understanding that passed between us, and then I let him take the right side of the bed. Neither of us thought our newfound company in one another is an odd arrangement. Everything just comes naturally when I’m doing things with Syaoran or for Syaoran. Perhaps that’s just how it is when he and I are essentially the same people; even with some defining characteristics of our own._

_It’s only been three days but I’d like to think that I know Syaoran a little better. If someone asked me to describe his most defining characteristics, I’d cite his warmth, his compassion, and his determination foremost. And then I’ll mention that he likes reading books and learning new things almost all the time, and if he’s comfortable enough with you, he will discuss about the things he has learned recently in your company. He is more intelligent than he gives himself credit for, but he will never belittle those who could not keep up with him. He is patient but he also gets annoyed over the smallest things. He would do this shockingly adorable pout which he will attempt to hide too late in your presence. Syaoran is also timid when around big groups but if no one else will come forward to lead said group, he will volunteer himself but not because he wants attention or power, but because he cares about people’s welfare and would do anything to keep everyone safe._

_Those are his defining characteristics. We both have our own._

_It makes me wonder what are mine._

_Judging by the awful things that I’ve done lately, I’d say someone who didn’t know me before all of that would define me by my cruelty, or that I’m unforgiving and cold and the worst bastard of them all. I wouldn’t say they’re wrong. They would have every right to think of me as repulsive because in many ways, I think I embodied those qualities just because I can; because I wanted to see where my limits are, so I walked the knife’s edge and felt for myself just how sharp it is. It almost ruined me._

_But I refuse to be defined by my darkness and failures. I want to be like Syaoran. I want to be greater than my suffering and stronger than my grief._

_And most of all, I want to love. Maybe the reason I’m so scared to be loved was because I never tried loving just as fiercely as the people in my life had tried to love me even whenever I push them away. And of course, I want to finally live._

_I not only want to live; I also want to be a real human being, and a real human being should be generous and kind. He should stand up for what is right and defend those who are weak and powerless. Just like Syaoran, but I’m not going to be the second-rate version of someone else. I want to be the best version of myself that I could be._

 

_Syaoran came over from grocery shopping while I was washing some fruits with the girls, and I forgot to close this notebook. He arrived to our shared room and told me he couldn’t help himself and read the last passage of the entry above. I was so embarrassed! Especially when he kept grinning at me about it!!_

_But his smile looks amazing. He never smiled like that at me before. Usually he looks a little sad and worried when he gives me a smile like he’s merely offering consolation. Now he’s smiling like he means it. Like there’s something to be proud of._

_Is it me?_

* * *

 

 

 

 

**April 5, 2012**

_Fay-san and Kurogane-san mostly keep to themselves since their arrival. We only exchange simple greetings whenever we pass by each other inside the shop, but I feel quite shy associating myself with them so I just either stay in the lounge or inside my room and wait for Syaoran to get back. Syaoran goes out every day to run errands which I wish he would stop doing but when I tried telling him that, a rather awkward argument ensued where he pouts that pout of his and I somehow just agreed to cook with him and Fay-san tonight. I’m nervous about that, actually._

_Anyway, back to Fay-san and Kurogane-san who make me rather uncomfortable because I’m not sure how to talk to them. In the mornings I would see them already up and about, conversing together by the hydrangeas, or playing a game of checkers while drinking from the same bottle of whatever alcohol they had Syaoran buy for them. Perhaps I could offer them some bottles from Yuuko-san’s collection? Alcohol is a very effective social lubricant. But that means I have to drink with them, and I’m sure they’ll prove to be pleasant company but—drinking only reminds me of Doumeki. (I need to stop writing his name in my diary)._

_Aside from those activities, Kurogane-san also kept chopping wood and when I told him that the shop doesn’t even have a fireplace and chimney, he simply gave me a look like I was an idiot, and it was Fay-san who had to explain to me that they were going to use the wood to build something. Neither of them specified what it was and I was too embarrassed to ask. I was very curious though so later that afternoon while I was playing with Mugetsu, White Mokona and the girls (I know how that reads like; it’s childish, okay, but you have to understand something: the five of us are currently playing the most gruelling hide-and-seek game in the history of the world, AND I AM NOT GOING TO LOSE TO CHILDREN AND ANIMALS!), I asked White Mokona what the two are building. She said that it’s a surprise and that I’ll know it when I see it. I…don’t know what to make of that._

_Anyway, the game is still happening while I write this. I’m currently hiding in one of the closets located inside the storage. I think I can hear someone come in._

_What an experience!_

_Earlier tonight Syaoran, Fay-san and I cooked dinner. The kitchen wasn’t big enough to accommodate all of us at first so I have to use some of my power to extend the place, and that was surprising for them to witness. I’ve recovered from my illness somewhat but I’m still cautious about using magic, and expanding the kitchen isn’t really strenuous so I didn’t think twice about doing that. Fay-san, weirdly enough, was quick to explain to everyone that the wish shop serves as a power source for my own magic, even though Yuuko-san’s last remains of magic is still sustaining it. This means that I can change it in any ways I want much like a person can control their physical body with functions like eating, exercising, etc. He then asked me if I ever tried adding or removing rooms and I told him truthfully that I once hid the kitchen away from view for the first five months since Yuuko-san left, and that I wasn’t even aware I was doing that until Mokona has pointed it out to me. Fay-san asked me how I retrieved the kitchen and I honestly couldn’t even remember so I failed to answer._

_He was looking at me with suspicion all of a sudden like I have something to be guilty about. Luckily, Syaoran came to my rescue and reasoned out that what happened to me—losing Yuuko-san—must have been traumatic, so I probably just used magic out of instinct. Fay-san wasn’t convinced, I could tell, but he graciously let it go._

_Now it made me think about how I managed to get the kitchen back after making it disappear for a while—and why can’t I remember? Did Mokona help me again? I gazed at the now wider kitchen and felt so lost. I never would have snapped out of it but then Syaoran came close and started holding my hand. The moment our hands made contact, I felt okay again. He looked so worried too and that was enough to shake me from whatever stupor I almost fell into again. And then we both heard Fay-san announcing that he would like to make the main course so Syaoran asked me which one would I like to do—appetizers or desserts, and I immediately picked the latter because I’ve been meaning to make soufflé since I saw the five dozen cartons of beautiful fresh eggs and the wheels of expensive cheese and chocolates I wasn’t even sure how Syaoran found. It occurred to me that I wanted to do something with frosting too and also something cold, and I ended up baking three different kinds of desserts with eight servings each._

_But I don’t want to talk about food preparation right now. This isn’t an instructive manual, is it? Besides, I think writing about the details of how we prepared the meals here in my diary would defeat the purpose of using this as a tool of self-reflection. So, instead, what I want to talk about was how I felt about working with Syaoran and Fay-san in the kitchen. I never really worked with anyone when making food. It had always been a solitary activity and being able to share it with other two people who are impressive cooks themselves is—beyond words of appreciation._

_Syaoran is…he’s just exactly what I need right now. Every kind of stress and pressure just goes away when he’s near me, and speaking to me, and often touching me in timely moments like he somehow just knows I need the comfort. Fay-san, meanwhile, is approachable enough but there are unavoidable times that I feel there’s pleasant neutrality to him that is not entirely genuine. I don’t think he’s concealing out of malice, though. I just regard him as a private person who can extend courtesy when the situation requires it, and except for that moment when he looked like he didn’t believe me when I told him that I don’t remember certain things when I use magic, Fay-san is generally easy to get along with. He used to be so formal when he addresses me but after a few days of being cooped in the same place, he now started calling me “Watanuki-chan” which…was mortifying!_

_He also brushed his hand on me every now and then; like, on my shoulder, or chest, or arm—citing he thought I’m wearing a very lovely yukata and that he also thought that the one I wore yesterday really brought out the peculiar, mismatched shade of my eyes…or something. Syaoran agreed which rattled me even more! I don’t know, I was too embarrassed to listen—especially when Kurogane-san just happened to walk in and looked as if he was extremely unhappy about what he saw was happening between Fay-san and I—which was nothing!_

_I ~~suppose Fay-san is handsome. But what about it? Syaoran is handsome too.~~_

~~_What am I even writing here?_ ~~

~~_ANYWAY!_ ~~

_Kurogane-san, on the other hand, glared at everything in sight but once I became brave enough to try and strike a conversation, the sullen expression on his face lessened, and he answered me straightforwardly, never breaking eye contact unless I break it first. He’s tall and broad-shouldered. He has a piercing gaze and he doesn’t smile as much as Fay-san. Being around him is…suffocating because there are aspects to him that remind me about …_

_As soon as we finished the meals and we were all full from the feast, I decided to pick the oldest wine from Yuuko-san’s collection, and some bourbon and gin as well, to bring them to the group. Kurogane-san looked happy as far as I can tell especially after he patted my head heavily when I poured him a generous fill in his cup. Fay-san leaned close to me to sling his arm around my shoulder. I think I even heard him purr. Kurogane-san just stared at us at first before he took my left side and…also…slung an arm around me…I beseeched Syaoran who sat across us but I had no idea that he has a penchant for bourbon because it’s like all of us stopped existing and it was just him and that bottle._

_In any case, he passed out drunk and Fay-san and Kurogane-san carried him together back in our room. I wasn’t as tipsy as I would like, though. Consuming alcohol almost every night ~~with~~_ _~~Doumeki~~ has helped me build up a tolerance after all. So I decided to write these all down as I wait for slumber to come. I can hear Fay-san and Kurogane-san talking with muffled voices in the yard outside. White Mokona has crawled into bed with Syaoran and is snoring a little. Looking at her face right now made me wish my Mokona is awake and well, snuggling to me during sleep like he used to do._

 ~~_Crap, did I write his name again?_  ~~ ~~_It’s not like anyone will see what I’ve written here. And it’s just a name. What harm would writing DOUMEKI do? DOUMEKI DOUMEKI DOUMEKI. No one is going to read this except Syaoran because he’s a nosy little jerk. And shouldn’t be drinking too much if he’s going to pass out so soon. What a loser!!_ ~~

_I shouldn’t write in my diary when I’m clearly inebriated. It’s just not a good habit._

 

 

* * *

 

**April 6, 2012**

_Syaoran has been cooking for me ever since I told him I can’t taste my own food._

_He’s been feeding me four times a day, sometimes five if he feels like creating experimental snacks—and there is nothing I can do about it._

_I don’t think it would be right for me to say that I never had anyone in my life who would go the extra mile for me just to ensure I’m safe and cared for. I had that once. I had four of them—and I betray each one every time I refuse to make my life mean something—something that I could fight for and even be proud of. I think about them right now and I wonder if they miss me too, if they want me back, if it hurts to lose me as much as it was for me to lose them. And I think it’s a selfish thing to do, to ask for…to hope for. Well, IT’S NOT, Watanuki._

_I wasted enough time being the one person who gets in the way of my own happiness and I need to find a way to stop doing that to myself. It starts with not being so negative, and with the people who are living with me in the shop at this moment. Syaoran and Fay-san and Kurogane-san, even White Mokona, never have to stay this long for my sake, and yet they chose to do it, and I shouldn’t feel guilty or embarrassed about that. I should enjoy it. There are still people who want to spend time with me, or fuzz over me, or talk to me about random things—and that feels good. It’s great. There’s nothing wrong about wanting people and having people…_

_…of being wanted and being had by people._

_The customer for today was a middle-aged man. He was a single father whose daughter got into an accident and lost the use of her legs. He came to me to wish her the ability to walk again and the price he paid for was by giving up his own privilege to travel. He can never use vehicles or any mode of transportation. He can also never walk long distances anymore._

_Just an hour later, another customer walked in and complained about a cheating fiancé. She wanted to curse him but I advised against it. Consumed by her hatred of the betrayal, she started sobbing and begged me to stop the pain. Syaoran stepped in and talked to her in my stead. He said that she should confront the man and break off the engagement because the only way to stop the pain is by moving forward and getting a fresh start. Syaoran then asked why she thought avenging herself by inflicting pain on the other person matters to her, and she said she has to have some dignity and fight back or she will lose. Syaoran said that her fiancé is not the enemy and it’s only by giving in to her hate that guarantees her defeat._

_“To you, it’s about winning and saving face,” he told her, “but for me, it should be about forgiveness. So don’t plot for vengeance and instead aspire to forgive. But then again, it’s your choice. Avenge or forgive—take some time and think about it.”_

_As soon as she left, I got dizzy and anxious somehow. Maybe because the situation reminded me about my fatal mistake concerning that woman Hisako and her unborn child. Syaoran immediately sensed it and was there by my side when I almost collapsed back into the sofa. He had an arm around me as he helped me steady. His other hand was touching my forehead as if he was checking for my temperature. I assured him that I was okay. And then I told him about what was bothering me and he listened as patiently as ever. I think it was the first time I really told him all the details about Hisako and the Jorougumo and discussing about what I have done to the latter was a very difficult thing to do because at the time I felt justified and proud because the Jorougumo was a spiteful creature who got what’s coming to her. And now I knew I was wrong. I may have hated Jorougumo so I used her and then I abused her, but the cost of indulging in that revenge play was far more awful and devastating because I could have just forgiven her and moved on from that. But instead I had to make her feel how I felt when she ate my eye. I wanted to make her suffer. That’s how I lost. I didn’t win by conquering the Jorougumo. I only lost myself._

_Syaoran asked if I want to meet with her again. He meant the Jorougumo._

_I told him truthfully that I’m afraid to face her. Besides, I was told that she’s grown fearful of me as well but I know her enough to think that she might be bidding her time and pretty soon she’s going to make me pay for what I’ve done to her._

_“Then confront her first, but only if you think you are ready, and that you can dissuade her from causing both of you harm,” is what Syaoran suggested._

_But I don’t think I’m strong enough to take her on. My powers haven’t been the same since that day when I cast a spell on Kohane-chan to revive her to life. I did almost kill her. She was at the brink of death and I got her back safely in this plane of existence, but it fractured my magic. I couldn’t tell Syaoran then that I felt like I was imprisoned in my own body and that my bones feel as if they were being melted, enclosed in a pit of roaring fire. I felt like my soul was about to jump out. I couldn’t move. I was hardly breathing until I started coughing out that disgusting black substance that seemed to have clung to my lungs and has made it hard for me to breathe normally. And that’s how Mokona found me and he did something to try and heal that frightening affliction. It proved too much for him and now he has fallen into deep sleep._

_Syaoran was just looking at me for a while as if he wanted to ask me something but looked like he decided against it. I wonder what it was. Before I could ask, Syaoran had both arms wrapped around me again as he leaned his forehead against my temple and sighed. I felt nervous about this gesture at first but then I closed my eyes and focused on his breathing beside me and I start to feel a lot better again. We stayed like that for a few more minutes and I think I must have fallen asleep because I remember waking up by myself on the sofa and when I glanced down, I saw the glass box where Mokona was resting in now closer to where I lay. I think I wanted to start crying then because I felt so helpless to do anything to wake him up, but I didn’t cry because that wouldn’t change anything now, would it?_

_I eventually did get up to fetch this diary and start writing again. I’ve been here in the lounge for an hour now. I think I can hear Fay-san and Kurogane-san building something outside with the wood pieces they have chopped and accumulated into a pile for days now. Maro and Moro’s quick footsteps echoed across the hall outside and I knew they must be assisting Syaoran in the kitchen._

_I have to rest my eyes. I’m also going to try and open up channels with my telepathy but there is no guarantee I can pick up frequencies again. The last time I attempted to do it, I got a massive migraine and I had to pretend I have a ritual to accomplish in the storage just so Syaoran can leave me alone for a bit because he shouldn’t have to know all my failed experiments to regain back the power I was once so eager to use to the point where it frayed and now it’s possible I may never attain its intensity again. Would it really be such a loss? I think it will be. Telepathy tethers me to the humanity outside my prison._ _Reading_ _through people’s minds and seeing their experiences unfold through visual impressions that are so vivid they are almost tactile—it’s an addictive practice. I need to have some of its sensations again, no matter how faint and short-lived. I need to know I’m surrounded by other people even if they can never see me or know me. I have to be a part of their lives._

 _Plus I need a goddamn smoke. I need it bad._ _REALLY, REALLY BAD. I can even taste the desire in my throat. I need my pipe. Where the hell is it?!_

_But I promised Mokona. I have to keep that promise._

 

 

* * *

 

 

**April 7, 2012**

_I was just looking for Yuuko-san’s smoke pipe. Because I need it._

_I want it. It’s mine._

_WHERE IS IT?_

_Okay. I need to calm down. Just focus. So I will write. It seems to help._

_What I did first was I physically rummaged through every nook and cranny, as they say. When I still couldn’t find it, I got desperate so I tried using telepathy even if it meant the migraines again. It worked! For the first twenty minutes or so, my mind opened a pathway through the shop, intersecting rooms I never thought could be connected to each other. While looping through them, I began to remember the missing kitchen years ago, and how I closed it up. I didn’t do it on purpose but I was also so depressed over losing Yuuko-san that I refused to touch food because it will only remind of the things I’ve already lost; those memories I will never recover, the incompleteness, and my inability to taste the food I prepare on my own. So I buried the kitchen like a shameful secret, tucking it away in a small wormhole somewhere in the dimensions of the shop. I didn’t even know how I was able to do it and yet I did. I used magic—the kind that came so easily and naturally to me even though I have never wielded it until that moment. Remembering that now made me pause halfway through my search for the smoke-pipe. I sat here now inside the lounge, in the same sofa where her scent has lingered—and I feel so very afraid. _

_Numb. Cold. Angry._

_I’m afraid of who I am and what I’m capable of. How could I ever hope that this will ever change? There are things about me that never made sense and never will. Is it possible that the reason I was renamed with a false name was because of my parents? They must have thought that I needed a protection spell strong enough to protect me from myself, right?_ _KIM_ _IHIRO WATANUKI is an obvious incantation. Was it a containment spell? Does it serve to bind me in this world like this wish shop is preserving me? Is that the reason why I’m unable to remember? Is it possible that when I was younger, I caused some sort of mayhem because of my powers so I have to forget it all? Did I…_

_…kill my parents?_

_I mean, I was made to fill the gaps that my other self has left—and that anomaly must have made my very existence cursed and immoral—_ _WRO_ _NG IN EVERY DEF_ _INIT_ _ION—from the very beginning. For me to exist means a destructive payment has to balance it out, and perhaps that’s why I must never remember. My past—what I was and who I could become if I retained the memories of it…_

**_ Did I kill my parents???!!! _ **

_Maybe I am a human being who deserves second chances and a chance for love and happiness. But I’m also a monster. I’m hideous. I have very dark matter spreading inside me like a disease, and I can still feel its filthy tendrils coating my lungs, ready to be coughed out. It’s going to consume me until I become nothing._

_Maybe I want that. Maybe it’s for the best._

_Did Yuuko-san know that the reason my memories are gone is because it puts me at risk of once again doing what I have done and only much worse? It's been said that those who do not remember the past are bound to repeat it._

_And now I have forgotten._

_I killed my parents and I will kill again._

_YOU WILL WON’T YOU YOU MONSTER YOU THIEF YOU FOOL YOU CANNIBAL_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Calm down_

_Write_

_Where are you now_

_The shop_

_Wishes_

_Yuuko Ichihara_

_Yuuko Ichihara_

_Yuuko Ichihara_

 

 

_REMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBEREMEMBER_

_WHY DID YOU HAVE TO FORGET YOU_

_DONTDISAPPEAR_

_What’s the point_

_APRIL 1_ _LOOK_ _FOR YOU_

 

 

 

 

 _LOOK_ _FOR YOU APRIL FOOL_

* * *

 

 

 

**April 10, 2012**

_Three nights ago, Fay-san said he found me inside the entrance of the storage room. I collapsed halfway through, and he said my body was sweating but I was also cold to the touch. He couldn’t find my pulse for a few minutes but he didn’t rouse anyone else. He just took me outside and lay me down in the bed of hydrangeas. That’s how I woke up, staring at the blue and purple petals hindering my vision for a few seconds before I spotted Fay-san hovering above me. I think I cried. I wasn’t in pain though, but the memory of hurting to the point of not wanting to live anymore—it was just too much for me. I can’t keep doing this. I don’t want to die and yet it stills scares me to try and live. To stop hating myself. Because I do hate myself._ _Why can’t I remember and why do I have to forget? What have I done that is so terrible in the past?_

_I only remember writing here on April 7. That’s the last date I wrote before the next pages were just…gibberish. And then…I think I can remember going out of the lounge. But I didn’t know where I want to go, but I guess I ended up in the storage room. Maybe…maybe I was going to look inside the box again for Yuuko-san’s letters. Maybe there is an answer there. Maybe I just need to see that sketch of Clow Reed. Maybe I just miss Yuuko-san and I need to remember how she sounds like when she talks. Because I need her so much. I need her right now like I need that fucking smoke-pipe. Where the fuck did you keep it away, Mokona?_

_WHY WON’T YOU WAKE UP_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_It's your fault_ **

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

**April 11, 2012**

_I was right about Fay-san. There is definitely more to him than what it seems. I just didn’t think he would understand me better—in a way that not even Syaoran could. That had been really scary for me to find out for myself just how much, but at the same time, I’m glad Fay-san and I got to talk about my problems because he knows so well what I’m going through. He’s gone through the same thing, he told me._

_Since inheriting the shop, he said, magic has held me together. It has done so for a very long time. It was my sustenance and also my crutch. But I neglected to maintain its purity and now I have the corrupted lungs that testify to the extent of my abuse and neglect. Fay-san told me these things free of judgment and pity. He looked me in the eye and asked, “Be honest with me now. What were you doing when I found you in the storage room? How did you end up there? I know you can remember.”_

_Fay-san and I were sitting together, facing the yard where Kurogane-san and Syaoran are working tirelessly in finalizing the structure of the tree house. It was almost complete. Kurogane-san had constructed it in such a way that it was wrapped around the large branches of the willow tree which was located at the far left corner of the yard. There was a curved ladder embedded into the thick trunk itself so you can climb it easily. It was rather impressive…and very beautiful. The leaves crowned the roof and decorated each sturdy wall. A few birds found their way into the house and sang for the others to take refuge as well. I really liked it and I appreciate their hard work in making it happen although the purpose of it was lost to me, and Kurogane-san didn’t bother explaining why he built it and I was…too nervous to ask._

_I could see Syaoran looking at me every now and then as he worked. He would shield his eyes with a hand as he looked at the sky toward the sun but I swear I see his eyes searching for me from where I was sitting, and I had to look away from him because I don’t know how I could explain anything to him at this point._

_I can’t help but feel I should have tried harder to get myself together in his presence. He shouldn’t have to bear witness to my rudely timed breakdowns. I don’t like it when he’s worried and fraught over my well-being. It just doesn’t sit right with me._

_After suffering a blur of days that stretched since the night of April 7, I became inaccessible to everyone. I withdrew to the back of my mind and no one knew how to reach me. My diary became my sole companion. Still, Syaoran and White Mokona have done their best to nurse me back to what is a semblance of acceptable health. Right at this instant, I still feel as if my body is not truly my own. Even simple movements like walking and holding things would  take me a while to accomplish and yet somehow I manage to keep writing in this diary as if I’ll just get possess by a force outside my own that would urge me to chronicle all of this down._

_Later on Syaoran would tell me that he would often just find me huddled in different corners of the shop with a lamp on my feet and a blanket draped around me. I would be so focused on writing that I don’t even hear me when he calls for me. He never wanted to leave me by myself but Kurogane-san convinced him that it was exactly what I needed so he had Syaoran help him with the tree house instead._

_Back to Fay-san. I decided to answer his questions in the best way I could. I told him that I was looking for the smoke-pipe and the container of my opiates. I told him that even though I knew I made a vow to quit it, I was under some stress lately that smoking it helps me calm down my nerves. Fay-san offered nothing for a while. His gaze was now fixed across the yard where Kurogane-san returned it. A silence passed between the two men that felt meaningful though I can’t put my finger on as to exactly why it was. And then Fay-san looked at me again and smiled._

_This is how our conversation went. I could remember most of the words exchanged clearly. There was just no way I couldn't._

_“Opiates produce a different effect on you. From what I can understand, a dream seer can acquire more potency in his visions by use of this drug, correct?”_

_After I concurred, Fay-san crossed his legs in front of him and then leaned on his elbows, sliding down from his sitting position in an angle that allowed him to examine me better while also catch glimpses of the other two people across us._

_He said, “But it’s still a drug. And as teeming as you are with magical properties, you are also still human, and humans use drugs for recreational purposes too. I believe it’s what is labelled as addiction. Is it not?”_

_He knew that it was so I didn’t answer. Fay-san still smiled and then added, “Addictions sprung from a bottomless need, and an inability to control that need.”_

_Again, he’s only stating the obvious._

_“You are trekking dangerous territories, Watanuki-chan,” Fay-san remarked. “Dreamscapes are…elusive places. They are labyrinths you can get lost in and never find a way back. Tell me—have you ever experienced a lapse in time? As if you aren’t sure whether you are awake? Whether you have slept?”_

_I nodded to all of his inquiries. Fay-san sighed and looked at Kurogane-san again. But he was still speaking to me when he said, “It’s so easy, isn’t it, Watanuki-chan? So easy to give up, give in and let it take over?”_

_Without looking at me still, he said. “What will you do next time when it happens? Would you still hold onto hope that Syaoran or that man—this Doumeki person the girls have mentioned briefly—will come and rescue you? What if that hope is what keeps you from doing anything? Can you do it? Can you give up on that hope if it meant you can find the strength to save yourself?”_

_I couldn’t answer him. I also didn’t want to talk about Doumeki._

_Fay-san  was looking at me at this point when he asked again. “Do you want to die?”_

_I sternly said, “No.”_

_“Do you want to live?”_

_“Yes.” I’m sure of it now._

_But he made me doubt it when he asked, “Why?”_

_“Because there are people who—”_

_“Why would you base your desire to live solely on what other people want?”_

_“Because,” I tried again, “I have to make amends.”_

_“For them?”_

_“Yes."_

_“But do it yourself instead, Kimi-chan. Always for yourself first before others.”_

_“If it’s only for me, then it doesn’t seem enough,” I told him, feeling ashamed._

_“So you convince yourself instead that you have to live for other people?”_

_“Then, how about…” I tried to convey, “…how about just for Syaoran then? For my other self? I want to live for him and for myself.”_

_“Why? What does Syaoran have anything to do with it?”_

_“I don’t know,” I admitted. I closed my eyes in frustration because I couldn’t communicate what I want to say and how I really feel. And then Fay-san was touching my hand so I was forced to look at him._

_“I really wish and pray for you to make it through, Kimi-chan,” he was saying. “I truly do. You’re a remarkable person. You’re tainted and marred with some of the worst ailments, true, but there is something miraculous in how you persevere all these years in spite of the weight you carry and even if it’s for the wrong reasons. I look at you and I see…so many possibilities.”_

_He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. When he looked at my face again, his pale blue eyes have moistened._

_Fay-san placed my hand on his cheek as he spoke, “The darkness holds you tightly now but the sun always rises, and with each new day is another reason to want to live—to courageously do so and never regret.”_

_Only someone who has lost the will to survive once can say those words and mean them. Fay-san had possibly just changed my life in that instant._

_Sometimes you learn to accept the bad things about yourself when there is someone else who may have had it worse than you, and then you see them put on a brave face because they want you to believe you can get past it. Maybe you’re helping them too by showing them that you can do just that. Maybe that’s why it only takes a little time to fall in love but it takes us years to know what love is._

_I must have started crying by this point because Fay-san reached for my cheek and run his thumb across it to wipe the tears. He was smiling and it’s different from the way he smiled at me a few days ago. This time he actually means it._

 

 

 

_Kurogane-san helped me climb up the tree house. Since my legs and feet don’t seem to cooperate, he had graciously (and quite embarrassingly for me) allowed me to hold onto his back, wrapping my arms and legs around his tall frame like I was some child. I have never piggybacked anyone in my entire life—at least from what I can recall. I hate questioning my own memories but it seems that unless I figure out exactly why I lost them in the first place, I will never stop doubting the kind of person I must have been…and whether or not it’s likely for me to remember again._

_It took me days but I finally asked this strange and aloof man why he built the tree house. I was still anxious if he would think me intrusive or ungrateful because it’s obvious to me that he was offering it to me as gift so I need to accept it—but I don’t understand. Why does he want to help me? Out of obligation? Because a generous mood seized him? Syaoran and I are intrinsically bound so I know that’s why he cares about me. Fay-san had undergone a tumultuous period in his life concerning magic so he can sympathize with my struggle._

_But what about Kurogane-san? Why is he being so…nice?_

_We stood there inside the tree house which was shockingly spacious. I think at least four regular people could fit in there. I must have looked so dazed with what I’m seeing because Kurogane-san was suddenly chuckling to himself like something amused him. When I met his gaze (with uncertainty, I may add), he told me that when he was growing up, he used to sneak off with a few of his childhood friends to an abandoned tree house in the middle of one of the largest forests in the mountains. He remembered it brought him joy to just…escape. Living in a tree house for a few hours has made all his problems seem so small because of the perspective it gave him when he’s above, and the world below doesn’t seem so overwhelming anymore._

_It was a part of his young life he never shared with anyone until now. Somehow he trusted me enough with that knowledge._

_“Listen, seer, I know it gets claustrophobic in that shop of yours,” he added, “and ironically enough, this quaint place might prove to be bigger than you can imagine. It’s the kind of home that could touch the sky without being as oppressive as a tower might be.” He sat on his haunches then and kept staring at me. He was so serious  but I know now that I have mistaken his reticence as unkindness. He was never not kind to me all this time. Since coming here he has done nothing but pour his time and energy into building this tree house as a gift for me because he wanted to share his piece of a happy childhood memory…share it with someone like me who could never remember having any at all. It was enough to make me crumble to my knees and reach out for him. He didn’t move away from me. He waited at where he sat and allowed me to wrap both arms around him as I almost crawled into his lap to do it._

_It doesn’t seem fair but in that moment as I embrace this complete stranger, I can’t help but remember another man who had given up so much of his time and efforts just to keep me tethered to this world; who offered me not only his heart but also an assortment of other glands…because all that foolish man had ever wanted was to be my friend— to love me even when I kept fighting him every step of the way._

_His name is Shizuka Doumeki and I am in love with him._

_I’m crying and ruining the page again._

_I guess I have to stop writing now. I’ve been writing for so long that I stopped talking to Syaoran especially during that critical time when he couldn’t even reach me. I have to talk to him and explain to him everything, even the things that don’t make sense._

_Perhaps we can make sense of it together. I won’t be afraid to lose myself with him if it meant we can find a way back together._

 

 

* * *

 

_sMiLe and sTay HappY, KimEe-cHaN~_

_yOU make thE bEst deSSertS~_

_I hopE whEn wE mEet aGain_

_iT wouLd bE unDer moRe favOrabLe cirCumsTancEs_

_bEcaUse i liKE yOu._

_i FinD yoU inTereStinG anD bReathTakiNg_

_anD i nEeD to kNow yOu woN’t leT yOur demons_

_desTrOy tHe maGnificeNt ligHT yoU do haVe_

_don’T forgEt sYao-SyaO, kUropoooN anD I_

_aRe a jUsT a mOkoNA aWay!_

_kuRochicHeeE liKes yOu vErY mUcH_

_tHat’S wHy hE acTs mEan so yoU kNow hE caREs!~_

strength is not always about power

be careful when you treat power as the only strength

when you think you’ve reached your limit

send our mokona a message

and syaoran will come a-runnin’

and drag us with him

so you better make it worth it, seer

also, ignore what the damn mage said right at the end of his message

he’s completely insane

 

**Kimihiro,**

**I’m a part of you as you are a part of me.**

**I carry you with me as I go,**

**And I stay with you even when I leave**

**I’m sure I will see you again,**

**And I look forward to it!**

**I miss you already.**

**Please don’t forget:**

**You are cherished**

**You are capable.**

**You are not alone.**

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

**April 12, 2012**

_Syaoran kissed me on the day he left the shop with the promise he will return to me._

_The kiss was chaste at first but it quickly deepened. I had encircled my arms around his waist as he placed a hand on the back of my head and laid the other on my chest. We stood there engulfed by one another for what seemed like forever. Having him this way—being had by him this way—it was only natural. It felt like a stretch of springtime lay ahead of us and we could never be truly apart even as he travels across worlds and I stay duty-bound to the wish shop._

_Before he left, he told me he loves me. He said it like it’s the absolute truth that no one can disprove, and we both know it. So I told him—shouted it at him—that I love him just as fiercely. I love him because the sun still rises. I love him because the dark always comes at night but so do the stars even when we can’t always see them. I love him because there is such a thing called hitsuzen and he and I have been living it._

_I was named Kimihiro Watanuki. In another life, across another world, as another person, perhaps my name is indeed Syaoran Li._

_But here where I sit as I write this in this diary, I have come to accept now that this is the life that I was given and should not lay to waste. Kimihiro Watanuki is the name that I was chosen for. I will never remember why but at this point, I will never forget either what I can remember now about the life I have chosen with Yuuko Ichihara and the wish shop, with Mokona and Mugestu, with Maro and Moro, with Himawari Kunogi, and with Kohane Tsuyuri and Shizuka Doumeki._

_My name is Kimihiro Watanuki and I’m a recovering addict, a work-in-progress, a gifted seer and granter of wishes._

_But most of all, I’m a human being._

_I vow to make amends and courageously fight for my life and have no more regrets._

_This is how I wish to live._

 

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~ Suggested song to listen to while reading: **_Gamble Everything for Love_** by Ben Lee


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kohane and Doumeki work on their budding relationship as both try to help one another to heal and persevere from the wounds their beloved Watanuki had inflicted. But, more often than not, pinning all their hopes on something already broken has only led to reveal more cracks in the foundation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me a while to write this because I struggled with how to deliver Kohane/Doumeki, but it was worth it! I have also established my characterizations for Kohane and my original character in this chapter, and I was happy by what I came up with so far. This chapter is inspired by the writings of fellow shipper **[Arisprite](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Arisprite/pseuds/Arisprite)** whose work [_The Doumeki Family Storybook_](http://archiveofourown.org/series/309951) helped seal how I feel about the Kohane/Doumeki relationship/marriage because the insights she has engraved for each installment of that series were so poignant and sweet. And so, I dedicate this specific chapter for the lovely Lady Arie!~

 

 

 

 

 

 

**90: Enfold Your Heart In Mine**

* * *

 

 

 

The streets are unusually bright as Kohane treads through them all by herself, hands clasped in front of her as she looks toward the direction of the temple and Shizuka’s house before her, which was only a mile away from where she is beginning to approach. The solitude of a walk never ceases to be a beguiling activity for her. She is so much more used to the tranquil pace of things for her temperament has always been more subdued than most girls her age. Sometimes, admittedly, brief moments of doubt and insecurity would seize her but that only happens when she’s surrounded by other girls whom she found out are not always welcoming or as genuine as they say they are. Not one to be confrontational, she opted to resolve this by avoiding associations with those types of people.

It was in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday, and she has just gotten back from her thesis partner’s house. Now she is going to spend the rest of the day with Shizuka; partly because he was also their thesis advisor so she carries their latest manuscript with her now as she walks. He called her up an hour ago and agreed to wait for her so he can read and evaluate it. Afterwards the two of them will probably have a late lunch. Maybe they’ll even cook together and then watch a movie. The familiarity of it all is comforting, and yet Kohane slows down her steps because the ethics of their arrangement still gave her pause.

As if in great secret, she begins counting the facts in her head.

One, Kohane is seven years Shizuka’s junior. Two, he is a faculty member and she is a student of the same university. Three, he is her thesis advisor.

Four, they’ve been dating exclusively for a month now.

Kohane merely shakes away the lingering doubts as she enters the gate and passes by the new orchard where the trees are in full bloom. She halts for a while to gaze through a few of the ripening fruits clinging for life and then she smiles. She reminisces the day when she helped Shizuka plant the seeds in the fertile soil, and how he blessed them as offerings to the Ame-Warashi. The noble sprite is surprised to be summoned like that but was nevertheless naturally pleased with Shizuka’s gift that she even spared half an hour to drink tea with them inside the temple. It’s hard to believe sometimes that six years have already passed since the day it all changed. She likes to think that the years that followed after were a blur but the truth is that life has moved forward for her and she got caught up in the motions. She went to school, got excellent grades, enrolled to a respectable university, and grew up.

The one thing that keeps her awake at night, however, are the things that have stayed the same; things that shouldn’t have endured but stubbornly persisted anyway.

Kohane continues to walk until she turns to a corner where the storage house is located. She knows Shizuka is probably there, preoccupied inspecting and cataloguing his late grandfather’s possessions. She recalls him saying two days ago that he plans on cleaning the entire place which means he most likely has been unloading the upholstery and the shelves outside all by himself since the day began. Kohane frowns because she is concerned he might be overdoing it.

She immediately sees him carrying two bundles of thick books as he steps outside the room. Shizuka is wearing a plain shirt and faded jeans and there’s a towel around his neck. He is also surrounded by furniture and several other boxes. As soon as he stands upright again after setting down the bundles, he takes the towel and dabs his face with it. That is when he notices Kohane approaching and he nods pleasantly at her. Shizuka never really smiles—that is an expression he reserves for special occasions or when he is particularly joyous and moved. But Kohane has been around him long enough to know that when he holds your gaze for more than just a few seconds that he considers you someone worth paying attention to.

When his eyes have that warmth in them—like they do now as he watches Kohane—that guarantees you are someone he actually values.

Kohane has been on the receiving end of such a gaze for years now but it has only gotten more intense, more meaningful this time, now that they are romantically involved with each other. She decided it’s nice; Shizuka is someone she values as well for he is her constant pillar of support and dearest best friend.

Shizuka meets her halfway as she approaches. “I’m just finishing up. Let me take care of a few things first. You can wait inside the living room.”

“Of course,” Kohane replies with a little smile as she grips the manuscript close to her chest. She looks up at him and adds, “I hope you didn’t exert yourself too much, Shizuka. You could have called for help. Didn’t you meet up with Matsuda-san and Tachibana-san yesterday? I remember you told me that they stayed the night. Don’t tell me you made them leave so soon. They could have helped.”

“I wouldn’t want to bother or impose on them,” he simply answers.

“It wouldn’t be an imposition,” Kohane remarks, “Everyone needs help from friends sometimes. You should let friends help you.”

Shizuka quirks an eyebrow at that and says nothing. But then he shrugs his shoulders and answers, “I suppose you would know better than anyone, won’t you?”

Kohane smiles wider now which was all the response either of them needed.

It took twenty minutes for Shizuka to finish sweeping the last corners of the storage room and another ten when he took a shower. Kohane patiently sits in the living room, sipping her second mug of green tea. When the oven rings from the kitchen, she stands up and puts on the gloves so she can pull out the butter cream cupcakes she made while waiting for Shizuka. She lays them on the table of the living room and then hears Shizuka walking around another room. Kohane goes back to the kitchen to clean up her station. Just as she is washing the bowl and utensils she used, Shizuka steps into the kitchen and stands there just five yards away from her. Kohane has grown accustomed to his silence so she pays no attention to it. That is until Shizuka closes the short distance separating them and places a hand behind her head. Its gentle weight is most welcome and in spite of herself, she leans back to the touch. She could hear herself let out a pleased sigh which made her pause, suddenly embarrassed about it and hoped he didn’t catch it.

Shizuka shows no indication he noticed but his hand now lowers down to her nape, with the touch still light against her skin.

“Your birthday is on Monday,” he remarks.

Kohane waits until she finishes washing the bowl before she replies, “Are you going to bake me a cake? I’m partial to cheesecake and mocha.” It was meant to be a tease and she glances up at him to see that he is smirking at her now.

“We could make it together,” he suggests and she knows he might actually be serious.

“I hope your contribution won’t simply require you fetching the ingredients at the grocery,” she says, smiling with more warmth than she realized.  Kohane wipes her hands with a nearby towel. That required stepping away from Shizuka for a while and yet his hand stays behind her neck.

“In that case,” he offers, “I can buy the ingredients and also bake the cake by myself. You’re going to have to supervise, though. I need instructions.”

“That could be fun,” Kohane remarks, unable to stop the chuckle that escaped her. She feels his hand tightening on her nape and it made her feel light-headed all of a sudden. She tries to compose herself so she kept talking, “I know as much that you can cook for yourself but it takes you a while because you’re so picky and exacting.”

Shizuka just hums in response.

“Honestly,” Kohane’s voice softens as she stares at his deceptively expressionless face, “who takes that much time using measuring cups?”

“Not my fault that I strive for perfection,” Shizuka mutters and presses his hand on the counter in front of them. He narrows his eyes at her as if challenging her to question that. And of course, she does.

“To make an omelette, though?” Kohane wants to laugh now but stops herself, “and using the measuring cups to make certain that each piece of vegetable is of the same length as the rest? Why do they always have to be three inches long, though?”

He just shrugs. “I have specific preferences.”

Now she does laugh. It is short but louder than she intended. Kohane feels that such an open display is inappropriate so she hurries and covers her mouth.

“Don’t do that,” Shizuka remarks before she completely places her hand against her mouth. It is only when she focused on doing what he asked that she realized he still has his hand at the back of her neck and it’s warm. They have been looking into each other’s eyes since they started this silly conversation. Kohane feels the flush rising in her cheeks and she lowers her gaze, unable to help herself.

Shizuka is someone she values. He is her constant pillar of support.

The hand behind her neck moves to cup her cheek as he leans down and kisses her.

_He is my best friend._

Kohane parts her lips to allow the kiss to deepen.

There is a pressure in her chest, like something was spun there so tightly, and it worsened as he wraps his free arm around her shoulders to pull her even closer. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands so she grips the counter with one and tightens the other on her right side into a fist. It only lasted for a minute or less, but the suddenness of it—coupled with his unexpected initiative and tenderness—had made the experience seem longer than it really was.

She takes a step back from him and finds that she can hardly look at him.

After another moment of silence, he asks, “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Kohane answers quickly, eager to dismiss the awkwardness she felt earlier. She doesn’t want him to worry. “I’m just—taken aback that you would be so…”

When she trailed off and remained quite speechless before him, Shizuka shrugs his shoulders again and offers, “I only want to do right by you.”

Kohane isn’t sure what to make of that or how to respond, so she took her time and allowed his words to hover between them instead. When she does make up her mind, she replies, “And I thank you for that. I’m touched by your efforts, truly.”

Has it only been a month since they stood near that tree and made a vow to make this work? Has it really been a few months before that, when Shizuka was seized by something overpowering and kissed her for the first time before he hurried away to fight for her sake? Did they ever think it would be easy to just fall into this comfortable routine, and pretend that they didn’t just lose something so immensely treasured by both of them that its loss is probably the only thing that is holding all of this together? Kohane feels her knees almost buckle beneath her but she steadies herself quickly before he could even notice.

“Listen, Tsu—Kohane,” Shizuka’s quick correction of the way he should intimately address her doesn’t faze either of them and so he goes on, “I don’t want to force you into doing anything that you don’t want—”

Kohane raises a hand to interject as she answers, “I made a choice too, Shizuka. You didn’t force me into anything. I’m turning nineteen this Monday, and I can make my own decisions. And I stand by with what we have agreed upon.”

She risks a few steps closer to him. Being near him like this somewhat burns, and she couldn’t explain why. “And there’s nothing to apologize for. I’m…your friend now and always, Shizuka. Besides, I—” she paused, searching for the right words before she settles with, “…I like how affectionate you allow yourself to be when with me.”

The sternness his face has worn earlier as soon as she stepped away from him finally relaxes. He gazes calmly at her now and asks, “Are you really okay with it?”

“I’m getting used to it by now,” Kohane reaches out to touch his cheek. Her fingers splay on his skin, emitting warmth and reassurance. “I want you in my life, Shizuka. There is no other person in the world who could ever make me feel the way you had made me feel in the last couple of months.”

Shizuka rests his hand on top of hers where it is still cupping his cheek. “No other person?” he asks.

She nods with confidence and, after a few seconds, adds, “…not even him.”

The pain that crosses her best friend’s features makes her stomach turn. His hand tightens around hers as he lowers it down from his face. Still clutching it, he implores, “…but how is it any different then?”

“Oh, you know,” she tries to offer but the quiver in her voice betrays her thoughts.

“Explain it to me,” Shizuka moves close as he lets her hand go so he can entwine his arms around her waist. The intimate gesture makes her feel hot on her cheeks again.

She opens her mouth to say, “You are here and he is not,” and instantly regrets it.

“That’s the only difference then?”

“No,” she answers truthfully and reaches to grip him by the shoulder. She uses her other hand to press it on his chest. “He’s always been hard to hold onto unlike you. I am never sure what happens next when I’m in his presence and sometimes I don’t feel safe. After everything he has done—when he attacked me—even if I have forgiven him for it—I don’t think I will ever feel safe with him again.”

“You mean you’re not sure if you could ever trust him?” He pulls her into an embrace then and rests his chin on top of her head.

Kohane shivers but wraps her own weak arms around his sturdy frame. She closes her eyes and forces out the words. “His absence is a hole in my soul but I have no delusions that it can be filled when he does return to us—if he ever does.”

“I understand,” Shizuka whispers into her hairline.

“Oh, I know you do,” Kohane buries her face in his shoulder now. “That’s what makes this a little easy even when it’s scary too.”

“How is it scary?” Shizuka pulls away slightly to look at her.

“It’s scary because sometimes when you look at me like you do now…” Kohane swallows and continues, “….and when you kiss me like you had earlier, it makes me wonder…” she pauses again and sighs before she goes on, “if you would rather be looking at him, and that maybe it should have been him you are kissing and not me.”

The admission stays in the air for a very long moment. Shizuka is looking at her with the kind of neutrality that she knows is only concealing the storm of emotions inside him. She holds her breath and begins counting the facts in her head again and adds the most important one.

 _Five_ , she thinks with some bitterness, _he and I are in love with the same man_.

Instead of commenting on what she said, Shizuka asks, “Did he ever kiss you?”

The sudden question made her blink several times as she feels her pulse race, caught unaware and unable to answer. Shizuka narrows his gaze at her and waits.

Kohane looks down at her feet and nods numbly.

“I take it this is when you saw him for the last time?”

“Are you…mad?” she feels so exposed now though a part of her knows she’s going to have to disclose what really happened on that day when Kimihiro-kun has taken possession not just of her mind but of her body—and how she wanted, _ached_ , to be taken by him more than anything else. She could remember the heat of his mouth, the way he echoed across her flesh—his beautiful, sad eyes—the needle burrowing once more in her head—how he lovingly cradled her afterwards and let her go even when she could feel it was the last thing he wanted to do…

She can hear Shizuka speaking, shaking her from her stupor.

“I could never be mad about that,” his gaze resting on hers is soft, and it makes her feel all the more guilty. “He reeled me in too, remember? He took me to him and then just as easily let me go.” The expression in his eyes has changed into something quite clouded and remorseful. It hurts Kohane to look at it.

“I’m sorry,” she manages even when her throat feels so tight with the words. “I knew that all you ever wanted is to belong to him…forever.”

His face stills. A shadows passes through it and then he shakes it off.

“It’s okay. Let’s not dwell on that anymore,” He takes her face with both hands and whispers into their lips, now only a few inches apart, “but I guess it’s okay to talk about it every now and then—how much we miss him…”

This time when he takes the plunge, she holds tightly onto every corner of his body she could get her hands on. Their mouths crushed together with more intent and passion, and the force of it is enough to make her crumble in his touch. With her eyes shut she can feel him gathering her into his arms and lifting her up to place her on top of the counter behind her. She lands almost awkwardly at first before she scoots back just a little to find purchase. Kohane does not dare to open her eyes just yet but she couldn’t help the whimpers that escape her as Shizuka traces the outline of her neck with his breath, and then his teeth, swirling his tongue between every nibble. She shudders and tries to push him away although she wants nothing else but to pull him closer and allow the sensations he evokes from her body to drown the memories of Kimihiro-kun that are still etched so painfully in her consciousness.

“Shizuka…” she murmurs into his ear before she licks it experimentally. Shizuka has trapped himself between her thighs now, testing the weight of himself against her, rutting only slowly without putting any pressure on the act. “Shizuka, be honest.”

“Yes?” he pulls away and peers at her face. “What do you want to know?”

Kohane braces herself before she asks, unable to keep her voice from trembling when she did. “Have you ever…made love to him?”

Shizuka pulls away his face from her neck but he doesn’t answer for two heartbeats or so but the way his eyes glaze over made Kohane wonder if he is retrieving the memory of it now. She feels ashamed to witness it so clearly that she ends up resting her forehead below his chin, right at his pulse.

She asks again, “Were you…did you…?”

“He did,” was Shizuka’s ready answer and each word echoed on top of her. “He took me to him.”

“Ah,” Kohane could feel her cheeks melting but she is still talking anyway. “I was going to ask you next—if it was the other way around—how it would have felt like to be taken by him.”

Shizuka’s breath hitches above her as if the next one he expels will destroy him completely so she tightens her embrace, afraid he will let her go but he doesn’t. He runs fingers carefully through her hair and asks, “Did you…want to know yourself?”

There is no more reason to lie. “I think I was fourteen when I wondered about it…how it would be like—to be filled by the one I love most.”

He takes her face by cupping her cheeks again and looks into her eyes. “Then on that last day—why didn’t you find out?”

“It would have been wrong,” Kohane answers although what she really wanted to say was that _it would have been_ _too late_.

“Did he offer…to take you?” His eyes look as if he was staring at distance and not at her so she placed her own hands on his cheeks to make him recognize her again.

“He wanted to, I think, but not for the reasons either of us would have wished,” she explains, her mouth both numb and aching as she did. “In his own way, he wanted me too. Not the way he wanted you, no—it’s something less complicated than that. He wanted me because…well, he and I—we have always been…”

Shizuka nods before she could finish her sentence.

“…we have always been…I’d like to imagine that I am tied to him with knots of strings, one more tangled after the next, and there is just no way that I wouldn’t be bound to him and he wouldn’t want to claim me. It was…I suppose, meant to take place. The only question was how and when.”

“Thank you,” Shizuka suddenly speaks, brushing the hair from her forehead, “for telling me all of this. I feel the same way about him…only that the strings that bind me to him also pull me along when he tries to disappear, so I fight to pull him back and for a time I thought I was succeeding. I thought I was his strongest tether to this world, and that I was giving him enough reasons to want to stay.”

He closes his eyes. “But I’m ready to admit now that I’m mistaken.” He opens his eyes again and adds, “It’s not easy to talk about the things that scare us the most, isn’t it? And the fact you’re being brave now—for the both of us…”

Kohane nods for his sake when he couldn’t finish his sentence.

After a few more minutes of just holding up each other, leaning against one another because otherwise they would have been in shambles if they didn’t, Kohane releases Shizuka, and he pulls away from her, taking tentative steps back. She closes her legs the moment he does and wobbles slightly as she climbs down the counter.

Afterwards it’s as if nothing crucial happened. They ate the cupcakes and drank the tea. Kohane listened to Shizuka’s comments on the latest draft of the thesis paper and then she leaves for home the moment the sky dimmed outside.

Whatever opportunity of lust between them was abandoned, or perhaps just tucked away, but the tension will probably continue to steadily subside. They did just come to an unspoken conclusion together that indulging the pleasures of one another’s flesh won’t really dull the ache that has been ebbing away for years now. It was much more potent now too, with the admittance that Kohane had coveted Kimihiro as much as Shizuka did; and that Shizuka had at least got to consummate his love with Kimihiro before the latter broke it off. Startlingly though, they still remain on the same boat. Kohane and Shizuka are still pining for Kimihiro whose greatest wish is not just about waiting for Yuuko Ichihara who is already gone.

It was also the hurtful fact that Kimihiro would rather choose the dead over the happiness he could have had if only he chose them instead.

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

Doumeki looked up from his desk to see one of the girls from his junior class standing there, an unsure smile on her face as she took a step closer and asked, “Sensei, can I ask you something? I hope you won’t think it’s rude…”

He blinked at her and leaned back on his chair, twisting the position a little to face her as he answered, “What is it, Shinoda-san?”

The faculty room for the History and Folklore Department only had three professors still working around this time. It was almost six in the evening, and students are supposed to be having their last class that only last until seven-thirty. Ume Shinoda should be in her class and not standing here, looking awkward as she is about to ask her question, but Doumeki waited before he could promptly send her away.

“A lot of us are just wondering, sensei,” she was saying, “if thesis advisors can be consulted at your own homes. A few of the girls in senior year have been…I’m not sure how to put it, but they’ve been talking about you and another student from the senior batch, one whose thesis you were overseeing? They said they saw her coming out of your house—rather frequently. They know she’s there for her thesis because she carries a manuscript with her when she goes in and then leaves without it.”

Doumeki kept his face devoid of any indication how he’s starting to feel the anxiety slowly creep in. Shinoda adjusted her bag by slinging it on the other shoulder.

She kept talking, but this time with a more hushed tone, “I’m just wondering since we’re also in the process of deciding for our thesis for next year…if most advisors would allow house calls or something like that…or is your work with that one student an exception to the rule?” And then she quickly rambled, her cheeks flushing. “Not that I’m implying anything, sensei! It’s just…it’s a talk that’s been going around classrooms lately and I suppose I got worried because, not to be a suck-up but you’re one of my favorite professors and I think you should know about any…unpleasant gossip surrounding yourself.”

Suddenly, Shinoda bowed by the waist and reprimanded herself before Doumeki could as she added, “I’m truly sorry if this was such an intrusion to you, Doumeki-sensei! I know it’s not any of my business but I feel you should know because if it was all just a misunderstanding, then it’s better to clear it up before it gets worse!”

He stared at her for a few moments before he cleared his throat and replied as calmly as he could. “I’m touched by your concern, Shinoda-san but you’re right, it doesn’t concern you, or any of the other students. But to satisfy your curiosity, that girl in question is someone whose thesis I’ve been advising on, and she is working with a partner, and the pair and I have agreed that we can have consultations in my home every now and then. There is nothing scandalous about it, and it does worry me that rumors seem to be spreading.”

He pushes himself off his chair gently and regards her with a little smile. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Before this inconvenient gossip gets any worse, I would handle the matters now with the Head of the Department so we could both address this properly and publicly. I don’t want my said students to be on the receiving end of a misinformation that could call their dignity into question as much as mine had been after you revealed this to me.”

Shinoda blinked rapidly at him, her cheeks flushed. “O-Oh yes! T-That’s wonderful, sensei! You should do just that! And I will support you!”

In show of her passion, she raised both clenched fists and nodded stiffly. It was almost comical, so Doumeki allowed his smile to widen a bit.

Having a conversation with the Head would have to be postponed though because tonight is Kohane’s birthday, and he has to be leaving now since he left her present at his house. Excusing himself from Shinoda and his co-workers, Doumeki tried not to show his urgency as he walked out of the university gates, clutching his trench coat closer to his body as soon as he felt a particular strong gush of wind pass him.

Doumeki is uncomfortable with the knowledge that people at the university have been talking about his unusual kinship with Kohane. Most of them knew that they used to spend lunch breaks together in open space back when Kohane was still a freshman. A few of them may have been familiar with the fact that Doumeki as a college undergrad had walked Kohane from school to her house when she was only in junior high. He didn’t doubt that a lot of them have assumed that they were close in private and outside the usual professor-student relationship, but none of them could ever ask him directly about it because it’s simply not polite conversation. They have their sleazy assumptions, of course, given that Doumeki doesn’t have an active dating life with women his age, and that he instead spends time with Kohane who is a very attractive young girl.

It’s rather annoying, he thought, but Doumeki knew that once he discusses this with the Head, he may have to reveal and clarify that he has known Kohane since she was only a child and is practically like a guardian to her. It’s important to be honest about that, even if he still has to conceal the fact that she is indeed his girlfriend, and that they have been dating, and are on occasion physically amorous with each other.

He slowed down his steps as he neared the entrance of his home. Doumeki felt the heat rise on his throat when he remembered that he almost tried (and thankfully failed) to express a more physically intimate connection with said girl two days ago. He couldn’t explain even until now what came over him then. All he could recall was that she looked lovelier than before, with an apron tied around her waist and her hair in a conservative bun, and then there was also the smell of freshly baked pastries mingling in the air of his kitchen that day. She had smiled and laughed openly, something he knew doesn’t always come naturally for her. He forgot for a moment that she had a difficult childhood, and that her heart belonged to another. All Doumeki cared about then was that she was looking at him as if he was the only person in the world she would rather be with, and it was more than flattering—it also somewhat restored what was cruelly snatched away from him months ago.

The truth is that Doumeki has forgotten how to care about someone deeply, and to care without excuses or justifications or fear of the unknown at that. He knew he used to be able to do that, and for a time he just lost it—until Kohane Tsuyuri looked at him on that day and kissed him back when he held her possessively, as he desperately imagined for a few dreadful minutes that it was only the two of them, and that his heart was not bloody and broken because of somebody else’s doing.

Doumeki unlocked the door and went straight for his room to retrieve Kohane’s birthday present. He placed his suitcase and a few books he carried on his bed, and then changed into something more casual. Ten minutes later he was walking out of his house and back into the streets, clutching his gift on one hand and his phone on the other. Kohane answered by the third ring, and he informed her that he was on his way. There was a beat of silence on the other end before she heard him say, “You really didn’t have to do this, Shizuka, but thank you.”

Satisfied by her meek yet warm gratitude, he hung up and hurried his steps. He pocketed both the phone and his present (a small box) as he walked.

When he arrived at the old woman’s house—the fortune teller who is now her adoptive grandmother—Kohane was already opening the door, probably spotting him approach earlier. She wore a yellow dress which was loose around the contours of her body that should have been made more noticeable if only the fitting was more snug. Realizing that he’s been paying too much attention to her body, Doumeki averted his gaze and prayed his expression hasn’t given anything away. Kohane just beamed at him before she brushed a strand of loose hair and tucked it behind her ear. “I’m glad you made it, Shizuka. Please, do come in,” she spoke warmly.

The fortune teller whose true name Doumeki had never learned so instead followed Kohane’s example and referred to her as “Obaa-chan”, walked toward him with a very confident gait as soon as he entered her abode. With both hands reaching for him, Doumeki responded by giving her one of his hands, possibly to shake, but Obaa-chan merely turned it over to look at his palm. Her expression softened for only a faction of a second and then her gaze rested on his face. She blinked for a few times, and then the corners of her eyes crinkled as she grinned at him.

“More handsome than ever, Doumeki-kun,” she was saying, “You look more and more like the late Haruka-san as years pass. Come, come! Have a drink with me!”

Obaa-chan had both gentle hands gripping him by the waist as she half-pushed him to the dining room. Kohane trailed behind them, chuckling as she playfully scolded her grandmother for her alcohol intake tonight.

“But we are celebrating the day of your birth on its nineteenth peak, my dearest child,” Obaa-chan answered as she once again half-pushed Doumeki to sit on the mat facing the table filled with food and at least three bottles of sake. On closer inspection, Doumeki realized that they were all empty as he shook them.

“We have more of that, don’t you worry,” Obaa-chan actually winked at him. He smiled back at her, his amusement getting the better of him.

Kohane sat next to Doumeki and began placing slices of meat and some vegetables on his plate. He didn’t recognize the foreign cuisine she prepared for tonight but they do look scrumptious so he didn’t bother asking, and simply took bites as soon as she placed the plate in front of him. He gazed at her once and saw that she was beaming at him again, looking pleased that he was enjoying the meal. He nodded back at her and then took the full bottle of sake Obaa-chan pushed at him from the other side of the small table. They were using kiriko as opposed to the usual flat sakazuki (except for Kohane who is using that instead), and Doumeki looked at the beautiful blue and red lotus designs of his cup after he drank his first fill of the night.

After another two or three fills, Doumeki finally put down his cup and waited for Obaa-chan to do the same. When she did, she met his gaze with a small smile playing on her lips, and he wondered if she knew what he was going to say. Without looking at her, Doumeki could tell Kohane must be holding her breath as she took minimal sips from her own share of the sake. He gathered his thoughts and finally spoke up.

“Obaa-san,” he addressed her more formally which the fortune teller immediately chuckled at but he didn’t miss a beat as he continued, “I ask for your forgiveness and patience that we didn’t inform you about this before it even happened, but rest assured that we want nothing but your permission and approval now, and we hope you will bestow them,” he paused, “you see, your granddaughter and I have been seeing each other as a couple, and we never meant for it to happen in the first place which was why we didn’t know how to tell you, and we both decided to take things slow which included keeping you in the dark for some time first—”

He halted when the old woman raised a hand to him, her amiable expression still in place. “Doumeki-kun,” she said and then turned to Kohane, “sweet child,” she began and then added, “You’re both aware that I have the gift, aren’t you? Did you not expect me to learn about this in advance before either of you even did?”

Doumeki had honestly considered that, so did Kohane, which was what made it easier to conceal their relationship from the fortune teller.

Obaa-chan laughed heartily now. She took another fill of her drink and then was quiet for a few minutes. Doumeki and Kohane waited in apprehensive patience.

“I read Kohane’s fortune years ago when she first came to live here with me,” Obaa-chan explained, “And I have seen two prominent men who will influence many decisions in her life. Considering her father is already out of the picture, I can only surmise that the first one is Watanuki who had cared for her during a most trying time in her life,” she paused to take another sip of sake, “…and the other one is you, Doumeki-kun, whom I have watched get closer to her each day, each year,” Obaa-chan looked at Kohane now. “I told her about this. Did she not tell you?”

“Not yet,” Doumeki answered for Kohane instead. The girl in question nodded.

“I know of the struggles you face alone,” Obaa-chan was speaking in a tone that made both of them pay more attention, “and the choice of facing them together from now on. I commend you for the insight and strength you both show as individuals, Doumeki-kun, my sweet Kohane. And I am joyful that you found love in one another during such an impossible time…” she reached out for Kohane’s hand.

After giving it a squeeze, the fortune teller went on as her gaze bore into her granddaughter’s, “…but even the most selfless act could oppress the one who chose it.” Now facing Doumeki, Obaa-chan reached for his hand too but instead of clasping it, she hovered her palm above his instead and added, “…while inaction itself is a choice, and it is the most damning one of them all.”

He flinched at that. The old woman’s gaze was looking through him and he swore he could feel the insides of his slacks burning—specifically the pocket where the egg is buried in. Doumeki withdrew his hand from her, lowering his gaze on his plate, suddenly losing his appetite for both food and drink in that moment.

Seeming to ignore his change in demeanor, Obaa-chan’s next words were, “And you both have my permission and blessing, of course. Please be happy together, Kohane-chan, Doumeki-kun. That is all I could ask.”

A few minutes of silence followed around the table before Obaa-chan said something about her eyesight dimming and that she needed to get some rest. She stood up and patted Doumeki by the shoulder. Kohane helped her walk to her bedroom. He began clearing the table and finishing both bottles of sake.

When Kohane returned, she had a look of concern in her face as she watched him carry the dishes to the kitchen where she followed him, not speaking. Doumeki didn’t acknowledge her presence at first but realized he may be shutting her out for something she had no fault in, so he turned to her once and said, “I’m okay. Please don’t stress yourself worrying about me. It’s your birthday.”

She shook her head and replied, “I will always worry about you, Shizuka.”

He stopped what he was doing and stepped closer to her, hoping he wasn’t invading her space like the last time. She looked up at him with a sorrowful expression now, and that was enough to make him wrap his arms around her back and pull her close. He didn’t care if there were unspoken boundaries set between them since what happened two days ago, when they both learned that their hearts though more entwined than ever are still bonded so tightly with the one man in the world neither of them could ever have. He didn’t care about that complication anymore. It seemed miniscule at this point because this is what’s real right now—holding Kohane Tsuyuri; this girl, this young woman, who is important to him. He cares deeply enough about her to aspire to love her someday, if not tonight then there are still many days and nights to come that he could attempt to do it. Love can be learned.

“I want to give you something,” he said as he let her go so he can take her present from one of his pockets. By instinct, he reached out for the wrong one, and his fingers brushed the familiar sensation of the smooth shell. He retrieved his hand as if he was burned again, and he saw that Kohane noticed. He cleared his throat and reached his hand inside the other pocket and presented the small box to her.

It was a velvet maroon box with a simple white ribbon tied around it. With its size and shape, Kohane’s eyes widened because she knew what was inside before she nervously popped it open. The thin silver ring wasn’t ornate for it had no gems or any design, and yet the symbolic meaning wasn’t lost to either of them.

“Sh-Shizuka…” she trailed off, still staring at the ring. Her eyes seemed to have lost focus. Her cheeks are a lovely shade of pink now.

Doumeki didn’t hesitate then as he took the ring from the confines of the box. Just as he was pushing it in one of Kohane’s digits, she closed her hand into a loose fist and said, “…you can’t. We shouldn’t—”

“I’m committed to you from now on,” Doumeki explained, his voice sounding distant. He looked into her eyes and asked. “Aren’t you committed to me as well?”

He noticed her lower lip quiver, and for a moment he was afraid she would cry. But she didn’t. Kohane opened her hand again and allowed him to push the ring in her finger. They both stared at it for a long moment, probably processing in their own respective ways what this means in the long run. Afterwards Kohane looked up at him again and smiled. Tears were welling up in her eyes, and he couldn’t bear to look at them so he cupped her cheeks instead and then leaned in with his eyes closed.

 

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

**_Three months later_ **

 

 

Makoto Endo has a silky dark hair she keeps waist-length. Her thick bangs are trimmed in a straight line. Her lipstick is always either candy or fruit-flavored, making her lips shine like delicious plump things on her face. Her smile is supposedly virtuous, but Kohane knew better by now. Endo is as beautiful as she is corrupt.

Right now she sat far too close to Kohane during today’s lunch break. There are six other girls around the table and all of them gave an illusion that they’re nothing but a group of college girls cheerfully talking about things that interest them. Anyone who would walk pass can catch snippets of conversations regarding the shows they’ve been watching lately, the projects they need to submit, and a few discourses, both enlightening and hopeful, about future careers they aspire to achieve after graduation. Each girl had a pleasant expression on her face, and every once in a while the group would laugh in synchrony as if it was planned all along.

Kohane would have been more comfortable in their lofty company if it wasn’t for the fact that Endo was merely using it as an effective disguise to cover up whatever ways of cruel cunning she has planned for Kohane today. To be honest, Kohane supposed Endo should be commended for being a passive-aggressive bully. She probably upgraded her tactics now that they are in a university and have matured into young women. Instead of being aggressive, obnoxious and physically violent like most bullies Kohane had before she started getting home-schooled, Endo was convincingly sweet. It would take a certain trained eye to spot her real colors. Kohane is probably the only person in the entire university who could see through Endo’s act, and Endo knows it, so this unfortunately has placed Kohane on top of her to-destroy list.

“Tsuyuri-chan, what salon do you go to?” Endo asked with a mild smile. She had an arm behind Kohane, resting on the chair. “Don’t tell me those curls are natural!”

“They are,” Kohane replied as she focused on eating her bento.

Endo chuckled too close to her ear that Kohane could feel her breath hovering. Then she whispered something else, “I love your hair so much that I could take a pair of scissors to it right now, and keep a fistful of it under my pillow as a memento.”

She said the words with so much saccharine sweetness that Kohane felt as if ants have started crawling inside her ear. Endo pulled back and grinned, adding, “But it’s only because I adore you so much, Tsuyuri-chan!”

“What? What did you say, Endo-sama?” one of her best friends chided in.

“I said…” and Endo repeated what she said word for word. If it was uttered by any other person, they would have thought she was crazy but because Endo is so deceptively delicate in appearance and bubbly, they thought her proposition of cutting Kohane’s hair was cute, and they reacted accordingly with amused laughter.

Kohane smiled stiffly and said nothing. She focused on finishing the last bites of her food. Once she accomplished that, she can get up and go back to class. Endo wouldn’t have protested and would let her go easily.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Apparently, Endo had more things to say to her and the topic of conversation is something Kohane had been dreading for months. She should have known Endo would find a way to use it against her sooner or later.

“Tsuyuri-chan!” she waved at Kohane as she strolled closer, her ridiculously shiny smile perfectly in place. They stood together in the empty corridor now. Kohane was tempted to back away and run, but decided to stand her ground because it was the brave thing to do. Endo doesn’t terrify her. Kohane had experienced something much worse when she was a child, and yet there was something ominous about the way Endo stood there in all her gracious air, one hand on her hip and the other raised to her face, tapping her chin with two manicured fingernails. There was something about it that made Kohane feel so unprepared and vulnerable to attack.

“How was your thesis paper?” she asked, “My partner and I are struggling with ours. We’re on our seventh draft and hopefully it would be the last!” she took a few steps closer, her feet gliding the floor as if she wasn’t really walking. “But I heard you and your partner’s paper is one of the most anticipated research work that some of the faculty have been talking about. That sounds spectacular, Tsuyuri-chan! What is it about again?” she cocked her head to the side, giving her an abashed smile but Kohane’s blood ran cold when she realized where this innocent chat was heading.

“A qualitative study on the cultural impact of premonitions and curses in Japanese literature and folklore,” was Kohane’s hurried answer as she felt herself back away without thinking. Her small display of apprehension made Endo’s smile widen, her sparkly white teeth now showing like a wolf going for the kill.

“Impressive choice of subject to tackle,” she said, “I bet your insights have quite a substantial depth. I can only expect so much from a consistent student like Tsuyuri-chan! So focused and industrious!” She clasped her hands together now, beaming. “A real, living and breathing example of what hard work and brains can accomplish. Not to mention when you have the right advisor to provide you guidance and give you many incentives, right?”

A beat of silence followed. Kohane’s eyebrows furrowed together and Endo weakened her smile a little, her lips changing into a suggestive smirk instead.

“You’re so lucky to get Doumeki-sensei,” she lowered her voice into a theatrical whisper of some sort even though she was only standing a yard away from Kohane. She bent down by her waist and placed her hand on the side of her cheek as she continued to whisper, “I bet he’s the most accommodating advisor you could ever wish for! It must be so nice getting more face time with him outside the university, Tsuyuri-chan. He’s quite the looker, no? I admire you for not getting distracted.”

This time Endo punched her arm playfully. Kohane didn’t react. She didn’t want to say anything that Endo could twist to her advantage.

Endo took another step closer and grinned. “Or maybe you have been distracted. I can’t say anyone will blame you, Tsuyuri-chan.” She then looked around suspiciously around them, in a show of mocking caution. She leaned in closer and whispered exaggeratingly again with her hand on the side of her cheek. “Between you and me, I don’t think it’s a problem, you know. After all, it’s not unheard of for a young, dashing professor to extend friendlier privileges to a very pretty student like you outside of the school. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Kohane opened her mouth to protest but Endo quickly wrapped her arms around her and the embrace was light but it almost stole the breath out of Kohane’s lungs.

“Don’t say a thing, Tsuyuri-chan, I already know the truth and I would hate it if you lie to me, okay?” Endo’s voice sounded chipper as she pulled away to stare into Kohane’s now frightened gaze. She took Kohane’s hand and while still holding her gaze, Endo traced the silver ring in Kohane’s finger slowly.

“Not to worry, eh? It’ll be our little secret.”

 

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

 

She didn’t see Shizuka for the next three days. Instead, she texted him and lied about being busy with her friends for this week, and he didn’t question the excuse since he had always trusted her. Kohane felt bad and began to miss him terribly immediately, although she knew that if she was seen with him again outside of the university, Endo may resort to blackmail with some sort of photographic evidence. She needed to find a way to see Shizuka again but preferably not at either of their homes.

It was five-thirty and Kohane was now just walking the corridors by herself. Counting her steps with a heavy mind, she didn’t even dare try to reach the History and Folklore Department, no matter how much she wanted to see her boyfriend again, but instead she found herself approaching the Science and Mathematics Department. It was odd for her feet to take her there. A stray thought occurred to her then, one that she didn’t try to shake off. It was about two weeks ago when she spent the night at Shizuka’s place to make him dinner after he had finished grading papers.

During dinner, he talked about how he was supposed to become a doctor, and how most of his earlier school years were in preparation for taking a course in medicine once he gets to college. Doumeki even tried to set a schedule that closely resembled that of a medical student just to practice his time management. However, because he met Kimihiro-kun and wanted to be with him as often as he could, he decided to take a course on education instead because that would give more personal time to attend to the other man’s needs, whatever that may be, even if it’s only the simple chore of fetching groceries, or joining him for dinner so Kimihiro-kun has someone to talk to. Kohane had known all of this already, but only because she inferred it from what she had observed. It was still nice for Shizuka to share about it, though.

Coincidentally, that was also the same night when they first made love.

Kohane sighed after recalling that memory. Her face and neck were suddenly hot.

She was still facing the Science and Math Department office. She has no reason to stand on its doors at all, but she pushed it open nevertheless and peered in. The faculty room was almost deserted except for one professor sitting next to an open window. The pink curtains beside her fluttered gently, and they obscured her from view at first. Her dark brown hair has gotten longer and is now on her shoulders but she still wore the same red-framed glasses that were too big on her face. She glanced up when she noticed Kohane standing there.

“Oh, Tsuyuri-san, good evening,” Misaki Kuwabara-sensei greeted her as she adjusted her glasses which almost slid down the nose of her bridge when she abruptly stood up to usher her in. “Don’t you have classes at this time?”

Kohane walked in with her hands clasped together, unable to push down the anxiety at the pit of her stomach as she looked at her favorite professor. “No, actually. But I’m really looking forward for tomorrow’s math lesson with you, sensei.”

She felt rather foolish saying that but Kuwabara-sensei beamed at her and that gave Kohane enough reassurance to come closer.

“Is something the matter?” The professor’s smile dimmed as she inspected Kohane some more. “You look pale, Tsuyuri-san? Are you sick?”

Kohane shook her head and knew she looked entirely defeated.

“Is there something I could do to help?” Kuwabara-sensei seemed apprehensive now. “Please don’t hesitate, Tsuyuri-san! I would hate it if you get sick! My, you’re one of the few students in class who can keep up with calculus which is a wonder in itself, considering mathematics is not supposed to be your major—” she stopped abruptly and then chuckled, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ramble! Sometimes I do quite a lot of that, actually. I could talk the ear out of store clerks, which I have on occasion, mind you. Granted, it’s not as often as before when I was around your age. I just have so many things to share, most of them random and not something everyone can relate with, especially strangers—oh, my goodness, am I doing it again?” Kuwabara-sensei nodded once. Then twice. “Yes, yes, I need to zip it up,” she made a motion with two fingers as if her lips are a zipper. Only a few seconds of pause lasted before she asked again, “But are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you, Tsuyuri-san?”

And Kohane had to laugh. Kuwabara-sensei is always so entertaining. She had always been a very animated speaker with frequent hand gestures and expressive facial expressions. Kohane never really considered math as a subject to enjoy but with Kuwabara-sensei’s colorful delivery of her lectures on equations (plus her daily dose of interesting tidbits about mathematicians and the ‘math world’), Kohane realized she was having a good time in her class. She couldn’t deny that Kuwabara-sensei paying her special attention every now and then inside the classroom is an added incentive to keep up her good performance. And Kuwabara-sensei is so accommodating to everybody else, even going so far as to request longer consultation hours so she can help some students especially during exam week.

Right now she stood in front of Kohane with nothing to separate them except common courtesy and Kohane’s nervousness. Weirdly enough, Kohane can’t help but observe that Kuwabara-sensei was wearing layers of clothing (an open dark blue cardigan revealed a thin pink vest inside which is on top of a white blouse with ruffles), and this was endearing to her somehow. The concerned smile which touched the professor’s features made Kohane blush in spite of herself.

When she realized she hasn’t responded to the older woman’s question, Kohane said. “No, I’m really okay, sensei. Thank you.”

Kuwabara-sensei frowned now. “I hope this isn’t impolite but I think you’re lying about that, Tsuyuri-san. And as an adult woman—yes, yes, I’m an adult, please don’t question it or laugh at its incredulity. A lot of people already have—”

Kohane blinked at that erratic interruption but realized that this is just typical behavior for Kuwabara-sensei who is apparently prone to monologues even while in the middle of a conversation with another person.

“As an adult,” the professor went on, “I feel that it’s my obligation to help a student of mine if she is in trouble, and I think you are.” She placed her hands on her hips and looked crossed for a while, probably to show her authority, but then it easily deflated when she started rambling, “I don’t want you to be sad, Tsuyuri-san. You’re smart, you’re pretty, you’re well-mannered and you’re the sweetest girl I have ever come across! Even when you’re sitting at the back of the classroom, you light up the entire hemisphere!” This time she made a circular motion with her arms as if she was depicting what Kohane assumed is the shape of the world.

Kohane had to chuckle at that. Kuwabara-sensei calmed down a little and was now adjusting her big glasses as she added. “So, if you’re having problems, however personal, as long as I can help, please do not hesitate to tell me.”

“What makes you think I have problems, sensei?”

“Oh, sweet child of summer, everyone’s got problems!” The professor raised both clenched fists in the air as if she was ready to punch something.

Kohane just smiled at the lively outburst and said nothing.

“Why else would you be here, Tsuyuri-san?”

“Well,” Kohane was going to answer that but discovered she was unable to. But she tried anyway and began, “Kuwabara-sensei—”

“Misaki!” The professor interjected. “I would much rather go with Misaki-sensei during private consultations, Tsuyuri-san—Tsuyuri-chan? Kohane-san? Kohane-chan?” she clicked her tongue once. “No, no, I should just call you Tsuyuri-san—”

“It’s fine,” Kohane surprised herself when she spoke up. “If you want to…I mean, if sensei wants to go by her first name when I address her, then she can address me the same way too. It’s only fair.”

The math professor grinned, her cheeks flushed. “Okey-dokes. Kohane-chan it is.”

Kohane felt her own cheeks burning too so she looked down on her feet, embarrassed beyond relief. It was in that humiliating moment that she remembered what Kimihiro-kun said a while back concerning his dream lapses; and that in one of his dreams, he interacted with Kohane and she revealed her situation with bullies and the fact that she may have been harboring…a tiny bit of crush for her—

“Kohane-chan, are you okay? You have gotten so quiet all of a sudden.”

“Oh!” Kohane quickly recovered. “It’s nothing.”

“Honestly though,” Misaki-sensei smiled at her, “why are you here at the office? My consultation hours ended a while ago.”

“It has nothing to do with that,” Kohane answered. “I was just passing by and I don’t know, sensei, I decided to just come in here. I can’t explain it.”

Misaki-sensei just shrugged her shoulders and muttered something under her breath but Kohane caught it.

“Must be hitsuzen,” she grumbled and then, without missing a beat, added, “So tomorrow we’ll work on some trigonometry basics because I think some of your classmates can’t wrap their head around—OH MY! Oh no, what have I—Kohane-chan, why are you crying? I-Is it s-something that I said?”

She couldn’t stop the tears from leaking no matter how much willpower she put into it. Kohane crumpled her fists in the hem of her skirt and stood there with her head bowed, the tears freely escaping and tainting her cheeks. She felt ridiculous, like a child still crying for her mother. She could feel Misaki-sensei edging closer and from the corner of her eye, Kohane could see that she was attempting to offer physical comfort but ended up awkwardly flapping her arms around Kohane’s figure, barely touching, as the older woman tried to figure out the placement of her hands. That was funny enough, but it was when Misaki-sensei spoke that truly broke the tension.

In a pained, hushed voice, the professor asked her, “Oh, sweet Kohane-chan, did you also struggle with SOHCAHTOA? No need to be ashamed because everyone has!” this time she placed an arm around Kohane’s shoulder and added, all sympathetic, “I used to hate the damn thing like you wouldn’t believe!”

And Kohane started chuckling through the tears, almost coughing in the process. After quite some time, she wiped her cheeks and looked up at the older woman, trying to smile. Her voice trembled as she replied, “No, sensei. It’s not that. But you were right. I think I am in trouble. I don’t know where else to go and yet somehow I found myself here…with you. And I think that must mean something.”

Before she could second guess herself, Kohane told her everything…

…everything except Kimihiro-kun and the wish shop—everything except that.

Her gruelling confession must have only lasted for five minutes but only because she couldn’t stop talking. Kohane just let it all out, starting with what happened to her mother, the early career she had as a psychic prodigy appearing on shows, meeting Obaa-chan, meeting Shizuka Doumeki—becoming lovers with him; hiding from everybody else, but knowing she will never regret the choices she made except that sometimes she wondered if she should…

Kohane never realized how much she has bottled up inside until that moment, and Misaki-sensei held her through it. Somehow, in the middle of the outburst, she was taken to a nearby couch so they can sit, and the older woman’s arm was now securely wrapped around her back, rubbing it with her palm in soothing motions. She didn’t interrupt as Kohane vented, and when it was thankfully over, Misaki-sensei still hasn’t broken her silence and considering her personality that in itself has made Kohane apprehensive especially when they started talking about Makoto Endo.

When the professor did respond at last, she posed Kohane with only one question.

In a hushed tone, she asked. “Do you love Doumeki-san, Kohane-chan?”

Kohane remembered his warmth, his kindness and his tireless commitment. She remembered the rarity of his smiles and the intensity of his gazes. She also remembered how their bodies made rhythmic sense together two weeks ago during that cold Sunday night—how she felt like molten lava underneath him as he moved inside her—how that single perfect moment belonged only to them and nobody else, and they finally learned together how to be whole again.

She didn’t even hesitate with her answer, “Yes, I love him.”

It wasn’t just Shizuka as a person who Kohane loves; it’s the uncertain yet a kind of world worth having which he is a part of; it’s the restless hope they share together, and their tiny painful wishes that serve as an unbreakable tether to the one thing they both wanted more than each other—that broken boy living in a place they can’t ever stay for long—a hurricane of a person neither of them could outrun.

Kohane could hear Misaki-sensei sigh. She can’t help but glance at the older woman and the bright smile on her face, coupled with a look of determination in her eyes that Kohane has never seen before, as Misaki-sensei simply remarked:

“I understand. Okay, Kohane-chan—Tsuyuri—what have you,” she waved her hand in a dismissive motion and then leaned in close, looking as if she can’t control her excitement. “Here is what we’re going to do…”

 

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

In the next two months, Doumeki and Misaki Kuwabara—a woman he has never met before until Kohane had introduced them—started going out on dinner dates in very public places. They also started having lunches together in the university during breaks. This phenomenon was hard to ignore, particularly where the female students are concerned. Apparently, Doumeki was considered one of the more good-looking professors, and Misaki Kuwabara is…well, Misaki Kuwabara; who was well-liked by everyone even though general consensus show that people also worry about her becoming a spinster as early as the age of twenty-eight.

Doumeki couldn’t understand how it was any of their business, but it was brought to his attention that Kohane is becoming a target of unwanted rumors and bullying and he will do anything to protect her which was why he agreed to this weird arrangement in the first place.

When asked by a few of his colleagues about the story of ‘how they met’, it was Misaki who provided him information about their ‘cover story’ with details that are impressively simple and easy to remember and believe. When Kohane approached him with this idea, he was wary of it at first but then he started talking to Kuwabara and found her…curious and eccentric that’s she’s pretty entertaining most of the time. He did enjoy going out with her, even when it’s only pretend.

She filled all their conversations with stories about intellectual subjects and it was only on their fourth date when she talked about her two older brothers who are both doctors that Doumeki became more engaged to her chatter. He eventually found that Kuwabara was deceptively jolly and carefree. Underneath that pleasing personality is an analytical mind that is often too quick for her own good too, making her leap from one subject after the next with complete disregard whether or not the other party can follow or keep up with her. He had tried to do just that, and even put some effort into it. Doumeki found it exhausting and refreshing all at once.

The only downside to this arrangement is that he has to see Kohane less frequently now. Their interactions have now been limited to thesis work and other school-related activities, and even then Kuwabara would tag along, clutching on his arm to display the status of their relationship, prattling about the latest tabletop games she’s been hosting with friends, and the unsolvable equations that she is currently working on. The three of them walking together must be quite a sight to people. Doumeki would be between the two women, looking straight ahead except to steal quick glances at Kohane or agree with something Kuwabara was saying.

Kohane would stay on his left, brushing her arm against his by accident at first until she would do it intentionally and he would discreetly press close for the contact. And Kuwabara would just talk and talk and talk and everyone would turn their heads to look at her, some looking disconcerted while others are amused.

And Doumeki would glare at those whom he deemed were judging the woman. He may want to be alone with Kohane because he missed her, but Kuwabara has become more than an acceptable substitute. She was slowly becoming his friend.

It was the week before a university-wide Halloween celebration took place that Doumeki noticed it for the first time.

Kuwabara had cut her hair shorter again and she replaced the red-framed big glasses with something that accentuates the delicate shape of her face better. She dyed her hair back to its original black color. When she came over to his place to teach him how to play something called ‘The Settlers of Catan’, she wore a lavender yukata with a faded maroon obi tied around her waist. Kohane was beside her, wearing a very beautiful pink dress that made her even paler than she already is. Kuwabara saw him staring at his girlfriend openly and flashed him a smile, remarking that she bought that dress as a belated birthday gift.

“And I know, I know, I’m close to six months late but I saw that dress and I thought Tsuyuri-chan would look absolutely charming in it, and I was right, of course, because you can’t take your eyes off her now, can you?”

Doumeki mentally rolled his eyes and stopped when he saw Kohane nervously looking down on her feet, her cheeks almost as pink as the dress she wore. He saw her raise her gaze to look at Kuwabara, and he was surprised to witness the obvious smile breaking from the usually glum and composed façade that Kohane has cultivated for years. Her face only brightened up more once she did smile and Kuwabara looked back at her with the same grin—and then she gave the younger woman a wink. Doumeki felt embarrassed all of a sudden, and he doesn’t know why.

Once they settled inside the house in the living room, Kuwabara, without preamble, began spreading the board game on the table, muttering to herself. Kohane was in the kitchen, preparing some snacks. Doumeki stood there in the doorway, silently observing Kuwabara, trying to figure it all out because the older woman was both irritating and fascinating; a scab he couldn’t stop picking.

Kuwabara finally stopped talking to herself and leaned back. She then took out a cigarette from the folds of her yukata, lit it up and took a long hit before she exhaled the smoke. She was so consumed by whatever she was writing in one of her little ‘notebook of ideas’ that she didn’t even bother asking Doumeki if it was okay that she’s smoking inside his house. Her face noticeably relaxed as she did it and for a while she looked liked a completely different person. That was when he noticed.

From this angle, she looked so much like a more feminine Watanuki. It was all because of the damn yukata and the short hair and the glasses—and the way she smoked and looked almost ethereal while doing it. Doumeki was frozen on the spot and couldn’t will himself to break from the trance. All the walls he had put up for several months have started crumbling in an instant and he realized that he may miss Kohane when he isn’t spending time with her but he knew he could live without her. But not being with Watanuki--that selfish idiot—feels differently, however.

It feels…it feels like…

It feels like _dying_.

“Oi, Doumeki-kun!” Kuwabara was waving her hands frantically at his face. He didn’t even realize she had walked close to him. He jerked back by instinct and grabbed her wrists in the process. Kuwabara yelped and blinked hard at him for a few seconds.

Her expression softened. “What’s the matter? Are you sick?”

“No,” Doumeki wondered if he sounded breathless as he spoke. “I just…maybe I need to lie down.”

Kuwabara was saying something again but he didn’t listen and started walking to his bedroom. He just had to get away. Doumeki sat on the edge of his bed, covering his face with both hands, sighing into them almost irritably. He didn’t bother closing the door so he could hear hurried footsteps coming towards his room and saw Kohane standing in front of him, looking a little dishelved yet just as beautiful.

He felt disconnected to her right now even when he can recall that he is sitting on the same bed where he had lain with her just a few short months ago. He had never forgotten how it felt like to be with her for the first time, and he wouldn’t deny that he longed to belong in her arms again if only time and opportunity would present themselves. But now there’s another person who is crowding their relationship and it should be worrisome but sometimes Doumeki thought Misaki Kuwabara’s presence was a welcome relief. Did that mean he adored Kohane any less?

But the moment of self-doubt and regret passes and he lets Kohane approach and take his side on the bed. She holds his hand without saying anything and they’ve been together long enough to know that this singular gesture is more than enough.

After a few more minutes, Kuwabara appeared in the doorway, still looking like the ghost of someone he and Kohane have learned to live without but only barely. After some tedious reassurances, Kuwabara finally believed that Doumeki was okay and she resumed her bubbly chatter about the tabletop game she has been pushing to play with them for ages. Doumeki sat across Kuwabara and attentively listened to her, taking note of every hand gesture and miniscule change in expression.

Kuwabara had so much life and noise to her. She was fearsome in expressing herself, and seemed younger than she really was because of her easily excitable nature and open display of weird habits. Doumeki decided he does like her because she was exactly the kind of distraction that he and Kohane needed every now and then.

There’s still a matter of how she resembles Watanuki in some angles but he’s sure he will get over it eventually. Doumeki wondered if Kohane has noticed so he turned his gaze at her and saw that she was just as rapt with attention as Kuwabara spoke. For some reason it felt like they were playing audience to Watanuki again by indulging Kuwabara’s whims today as if she was the most natural installment in their lives. Only that Kuwabara was not their sad, imprisoned seer who made an irreversible wish that robbed him of the simplest pleasures in life. She was beaming with joy and pride whereas Watanuki is solemn and reticent.

He wasn’t always that way though. He used to be livelier too. He used to have something to live for even when he’s trapped between holding on and disappearing.

Doumeki shouldn’t have given up on him so easily. He should have fought for him.

Now he tried to convince himself that being with Kohane and enjoying Kuwabara’s company are the healthier choices. There was no way he should stay hung up on the notion that Watanuki is still within his reach, if he had ever been at all.

He has told himself this little lie every day since, but he has yet to believe it.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An old college friend started reading the prequel _Frequency_ and he was gracious to provide me his thoughts afterwards, and I just want to share his perspective regarding it because his points are spot-on in analyzing my characterization of Watanuki; stuff that even I wasn't aware I was incorporating. According to him, _Watanuki undergoes the five stages of grief as he comes to terms about his new life in the wish shop._ Here is his detailed summary for each:
> 
>  **DENIAL** – In the second chapter, he clings to Yuuko’s memory by reading her correspondences with Clow Reed; he smokes her pipe and wears her kimonos; he finds solace in dreams that allow him to escape his reality; he doesn’t own up to his guilt and regret about possibly outliving his loved ones.
> 
>  **ANGER** – In the third and fourth chapters, as he starts to process his grief with more self-awareness, he also displays aggressive behavior (e.g. telepathically violating Kohane and Doumeki); and lashes out all of his frustrations through abuse of power.
> 
>  **BARGAINING** – In the fifth chapter, he tries his hand on villainy; his attack on the Jorougumo can be seen as an extension of his anger stage, but it was also calculated and strategic; he committed this heinous act possibly to see if there is a way he can live as a bad guy, and that is how he bargains with the inescapable reality of imprisonment: by trying to enjoy cruelty rather than give in to the loneliness.
> 
>  **DEPRESSION** – In the sixth and seventh chapters, we see him regretting all his decisions, and all the people he hurt. For the sixth chapter, he spirals down once he acknowledged that he made a series of bad choices and now he might never get to repair the relationships he destroyed. For the seventh chapter, he hits rock bottom for good and retreats from Kohane and Doumeki; he begins to believe more fiercely that he doesn’t deserve love. Syaoran’s appearance in the last scene was a good thing because it leads to the final stage in the sequel.
> 
>  **ACCEPTANCE** – In the first chapter of this sequel, Watanuki chronicles his daily life so he can gain more helpful insights about himself and others. The presence of three other people who have had their own share of personal hardships have also given him the strength and courage to ‘make amends’ and start anew. His old life might have ended when he made a choice to take over the shop, wait for Yuuko and never age, but it was really at this precise moment that he accepted his new life without any lingering bitterness on the finer details. Here he can hopefully evolve to be the best person he can be—the person Yuuko believes he was always meant to be.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doumeki falls back once again into his old habits as Kohane misjudges her own emotions and falls from a steep cliff. Meanwhile, Watanuki falls prey to his own weakness but at least has finally stopped hiding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has taken me a while to write this chapter because I also took very long breaks in between weeks, writing another DouWata piece about their Live-Action counterparts. I was happy to accomplish this as the new month arrived, but I believe my next update will take a long time once more, realistically speaking, due to pressing demands IRL. Writing this sequel has proven to be very daunting because I want to ensure the prose sounds right, and the characterizations stay as earnest as the one I hoped for when I was still writing _Frequency_. But rest assured I will finish this tale and that it would be a satisfying conclusion. This story means a lot to me and I plan on finishing the journey of its completion :)
> 
> Two days from now is Doumeki's birthday and also the day of the doll festival in Japan. Happy birthday, Doumeki-kun! <3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**66: Why They Call It Falling**

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

_‘ Perhaps we all give our hearts uncritically to those who hardly think of us in return ‘_

~ T. H White

 

 

 

It ends like this and then starts again:

Doumeki finds Watanuki standing under the unforgiving rain and even from a far Doumeki could tell that the other boy is drenched to the bone. Watanuki says something aloud while cradling a dead cat in his arms and even though the sound of rain muffled his words, Doumeki hears them clearly.

Watanuki meets Doumeki for the first time and tries to kick him in the face.

Doumeki finds Watanuki blind in his right eye.

Watanuki reaches out a jubako toward him, grumbling about its heaviness, and Doumeki accepts to carry it, willing to share the burden of its weight.

Doumeki finds Watanuki in a bloody carnage of glass.

Watanuki turns his back away from him and asks if Doumeki had been fine giving him that much quantity of blood to save him, and when Doumeki stresses that it was indeed the case, the other boy takes a deep breath and his voice trembles as he utters a single phrase that Doumeki must have been waiting for. He gets excited and peers curiously at Watanuki’s face, and the other boy hides it quickly. Still, Doumeki persists and catches up to him while Watanuki blindly tries to get away.

Doumeki finds Watanuki running to shield Kohane from her own mother’s fists.

Watanuki smiles at Doumeki for the first time as he tells him that he trusts that the other boy will always be there, and that’s why he wasn’t afraid to do it.

Doumeki finds him inside the storage room that afternoon when it all changed.

Watanuki drapes Yuuko’s delicate kimono around his shoulders and its hem reaches beyond his feet and spills to the wooden floor. He looks exquisite, and the vision hits Doumeki like a brick to the face the moment he sets his eyes upon the other boy; but there is pain reflected in Watanuki’s eyes. It turned his beauty into a cruel façade.

It ends like this and then starts again, when Doumeki keeps finding Watanuki—only to lose him over and over again.

Now Watanuki appears to him in a dream, perched in one of the low branches of a cherry blossom tree. He looks at Doumeki as if not seeing him. And then he smiles.

Doumeki wakes up and begins to walk out of his bedroom and out of the house. He reaches the sidewalk and passes by a pack of teens who are dressed as ghouls and witches but they simply ignore the man in a loose yukata who is fumbling his way through the dim lights of the street. Doumeki walks and walks as if his feet have a purpose of their own and he has no other choice but to obey.

Watanuki calls his name from somewhere close, the cadence of his voice oddly appeasing.

He beckons with nothing but a name, whispers it like a secret.

And Doumeki finds the wish shop again.

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

He looks tired.

That was the first thing Watanuki thinks as the other man stands there outside the shop, eyes widening upon the realization that he can see it again.

A surge of thrill runs through Watanuki once he finally processed that Doumeki is indeed in close vicinity. How many times has he imagined this moment? How many months has it been since Watanuki held the other man in his arms and tasted his memories when they first laid together? How long has it been since he buried away all the regrets that came with it? But the excitement of seeing his estranged lover is immediately replaced by guilt when he sees Doumeki’s hands reaching for the barrier as if he’s making sure it’s not there anymore. He sees the hope falter in Doumeki’s face the moment he is able to touch the surface and how, almost immediately, he flinched from the magical undercurrent that would have burned him if his hands stayed there for a few more seconds.

Watanuki breathes in and out for a few moments. Then, he walks closer. With only a few yards away from his beloved, he raises his palms to touch the barrier for himself. A resurgence of disquiet erupts, a burning tactile sensation on his fingertips.

It falls away momentarily and Watanuki wastes no time and grabs Doumeki by the wrist, dragging him in. The other man steps in willingly.

“Sorry,” Watanuki apologizes, “My magic has been…unpredictable lately. It has even taken me a few months to find a way to diminish the barrier for a few seconds to allow someone I’ve banished back in. And yes, I can’t reverse the banishment I’ve cast on you just yet, and so you only have an hour, tops, before you—”

He doesn’t realize how he hardly breathed in between his words, eager to explain all technicalities before they proceed with the difficult part of this meeting, but Doumeki clearly wants to get to the reconciliation part rather quickly—or at least that is what Watanuki assumes—as Doumeki roughly takes his face in his hands and kisses him. No gentle coaxing or probing; just his hot mouth latching onto his and hands pulling him closer for contact and friction. Watanuki is embarrassed to admit he squealed as soon as Doumeki took him and locked him in a knot of searing kisses. Watanuki is even more embarrassed to admit he is sorely tempted to begin and end their conversation simply with the rhythm of their bodies, and Doumeki seems compliant about the same thing. He almost tears off Watanuki’s yukata as he pushes the seer to the ground where they unceremoniously collapsed. There might be some bruising later on but even the dull physical pain of this awkward reunion was better than what was otherwise feared by both of them. So, instead of seeking for pause, Watanuki ignores all caution and commits the same sensual violence on Doumeki’s yukata where he promptly shoves it down his elbows so he can trail his tongue and teeth on the skin of the other man’s shoulder and suck around his tantalizing clavicles, all in joyous relief.

This is the man he loves; this is his flesh pressed so tangibly and aching against his hold, and Watanuki could sense every ripple both in Doumeki’s body and his mind whose channel is opening up to Watanuki’s influence, and now everything is ripe for the taking. Once he was immersed in the onslaught of taste and scent, and the tiny echoes that his previously dormant telepathy are now tethering to, this is when Watanuki finally finds the strength of will to stop himself. He grips Doumeki and forces him away, pushing him off so he could sit up and look at him. The clarity cuts through the haze of yearning, and it hurts.

It hurts to know that Doumeki can never be truly his again. It hurts to know that Doumeki believes otherwise, even after what Watanuki has put him through. Doumeki still desires to belong to him—absolutely and unshakably. And it hurts.

They have to start over. They can’t end it like this, with yet another union of flesh but not completely of heart. They want and need each other but they need to express it better, and not just allow themselves to fit together as their naked desire intended. Watanuki knows what they have lost—what he himself destroyed—will not be restored, made whole again, simply through lust. It is that very same overwhelming force that clouded their judgment once. Doumeki will never be truly inside him if Watanuki only grants him one passage; that of the body; but not of his mind and heart. He deserves better than this kind of hollow intimacy.

“Please,” he catches his breath first before he continues, “I didn’t ask to meet you just for this, Doumeki.”

Doumeki sits there on the ground and blinks a few times as if he’s still under the impression that this is all just a dream. Tentatively, Watanuki reaches out because he wants to assure him that this is all too real. He brushes his fingers on the other man’s cheek and even that simple gesture is already one of the most difficult things to do. Doumeki’s eyes drooped and he leans to the touch.

Watanuki lets out a nervous chuckle under his breath and allows his fingers to trace the entirety of the man’s face. And then he cups Doumeki’s cheeks by both hands and says, “We don’t have enough time to waste on other things. I invited you back here because there are things we need to discuss. I have so much to tell you. I don’t even know how to begin. But if you can stay a while and be patient, I would like to be completely honest with you this time.” Watanuki makes a move to stand. He lets Doumeki go only so he can reach out his hand to help him stand as well.

“I’m really here?” is Doumeki’s dumbfounded response, staring at the outstretched hand offered to him.

“Yes,” Watanuki tries to smile but it feels out of place.

“And you’re…you?” Doumeki asks, and a fearful edge to his tone creeps in.

Watanuki frowns at that. “I know that the last time when we were together—what I’ve done to you—there is no way you could ever forgive me for that, but please listen to me at least…I should have been more truthful even before.”

“Forgive?” Doumeki chuckles now but the sound is nothing close to amusement. “I was never angry at you. I was angrier at myself than you, and the things I didn’t say or do. If I did and say those things, maybe you and I—”

“And I think that’s the problem,” Watanuki moves his outstretched hand closer, “Please, Doumeki. Do come inside the shop and let’s talk.”

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

Doumeki lingers on the ground for a few moments longer before he finally takes the hand above him and gets up. Watanuki leads him to the doors and they walk the empty hallway together. There was barely any light and all Doumeki could make out were shadows in the corners where objects he doesn’t recognize anymore are placed. Maro and Moro are nowhere in sight but Mokona hopped into view as soon as they are heading to the lounge. He gets up on Doumeki’s shoulder but says nothing. His presence, however, is a comfort. It means all of this is indeed real and Watanuki is grasping his hand right now and their fingers have interlaced naturally.

The first thing that Doumeki notices as he enters the lounge were the walls and their harsh lack of color. There are no wooden panels anymore, and the floor his feet are standing on is definitely made of cement. He only assumes it is the lounge because it’s the same room size, and Yuuko’s favorite couch is still on the far side center, but now everything else has changed. Before he can ask, Mokona is the one who answers, “We decided a few renovations are needed. Besides, it’s a rather effective distraction for Watanuki himself. The months have been difficult for all of us here.”

Mokona hops down as Watanuki lets his hand fall away from Doumeki’s. He and Mokona head to the couch together. Once they took their respective places, Doumeki kneels down before them, resting his full weight on his haunches. He puts his hands on his lap and waits even though his pulse is beginning to race for some reason, and the dread at the pit of his stomach is becoming harder to ignore.

Seven months wasn’t really a long time to be separated from a man he had been so devoted to since they were only seventeen. After all, there was the last six years before that when he never missed a day going to the shop just to see if he is needed by Watanuki—or at least _feel_ that he is needed. Everything else was a blur of time running out and in the end what mattered were the core memories; when Watanuki made a wish and took on the responsibility of the shop; when Doumeki couldn’t make a choice about using the egg Yuuko has given him; and when Watanuki continued to grow lonelier and angrier as he remained trapped inside the shop. Those were the three important ones that dictated Doumeki’s life. Anything else is consequential—and that included his relationship with Kohane Tsuyuri.

Now he realized that it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. He can’t truly live if he continued to hope that Watanuki would come back from the dark path he treaded and find his way back to Doumeki. It is his single, greatest wish and the price is one he could never pay, so it was a wonderful irony that the shop itself rejected him.

Being with Watanuki now, sharing his space, talking to him, being this near him once more—it should erase all his doubts and fears but it isn’t like that at all. Perhaps he does need to forgive Watanuki because he had a right to be angry. Perhaps accepting him back into his life—especially now that Doumeki has Kohane whom he vowed to someday marry—isn’t supposed to be an easy transition. Neither of them can ever go back to the way things were since Watanuki never treated him any kinder when they were younger either. So here they are, stuck in a purgatory, unable to move forward. Doumeki has never felt this kind of fear before; it is closer to despair than actual terror. It takes over him right now, overpowering whatever thrill and relief he may be feeling over seeing Watanuki again.

It’s making him angry.

“How is everything in your life, Doumeki?” Watanuki begins, his composure relaxed but Doumeki sees him flexing his fingers on the right hand as if he is clutching something invisible. Mokona glances at that as well and then meets Doumeki’s gaze.

“A number of changes has occurred the last time you are here,” Mokona remarks suddenly. “Not just the appearance of the shop’s interior. Watanuki’s powers have been dampened somehow, and his other abilities such as his telepathy—well, he can’t access his magic as easily as he had done so before.” There was a pregnant pause before he adds, “We’ll tell you all about it. But first, let’s talk about you.”

Watanuki nods at this. He still keeps flexing his fingers.

“I’ve been better,” Doumeki finally answers. “I’m still teaching at the same university. Nothing of note really happened after the last time I was here.”

Doumeki’s mind drifts back. Kohane is still asleep, and she may have stirred awake in their bed when he left all of a sudden. She has moved in with him just last week—so did Misaki Kuwabara. The older woman has a car and so she would sneak Kohane inside it as she parks it inside the spacious backyard of the Doumeki temple. The arrangement is peculiar; on one hand the three of them lived together like roommates; on the other Doumeki now has two girlfriends—one whom the public knows about, and another who shares his bed in the privacy of their room.

He cares about them both women, but Kuwabara is merely an optional installment in his life he has no problem giving up when the time comes. The same can never be said about Kohane. He adores her. He wants to take care of her. This obligation is far too complicated to generalize as simply such, however, because they have learned to treat each other more as lovers than just convenient substitutes. Now Doumeki feels guilty for disrespecting what they have built over the last few months when he acted out of his mind and kissed Watanuki earlier; a man who could never possibly understand what it had cost them to give him up in the first place. Doumeki has chosen Kohane, and not because he felt like he owed her—he chose her because he wanted her. He does. It may not be the same kind of desire as the one he continues to harbor for Watanuki, but it didn’t make it any less authentic or important.

With Kohane, they can be happy together. Can the same thing be said about being with Watanuki? Looking at the man in question sitting across him—how could anyone find happiness with such a broken wisp of an eternal seventeen-year-old who wouldn’t even let go of the dead things that are preventing him from living?

“Doumeki,” Watanuki calls his name and brings him back to the present. The other man sits more upright in the couch. He clasps his hands together now. “When I said that we should be honest, I meant it, and I hope it wouldn’t just be on my end of the conversation. But I understand if you don’t feel like disclosing certain details of your life. Gods know I don’t deserve to be back in it.”

“If you already know I’m withholding information, and the contents of said information, then what is the point for me to hide it?”

Unwittingly, Doumeki starts to become suspicious that Watanuki might be exploring the contents of his mind. Mokona claims on his behalf that he has lost the ability to do it, but how much can Doumeki really trust that? How could he ever trust Watanuki again after everything?

“It’s not like that,” Watanuki shakes his head almost sadly. “I don’t want you to misunderstand. I told you when you came here that my powers have weakened so even if I can channel myself using the astral plane, it never would have worked for two reasons. One, I’ve reached an unfortunate handicap when it comes to using such magic. And two—the most important reason—is that I don’t want to invade your privacy by needlessly spying on your life.”

“You’ve done it before, haven’t you?” Doumeki didn’t mean to make that sound accusatory but there is no way it wouldn’t come off as anything but that.

“Yes,” Watanuki readily admits. “And Kohane-chan isn’t here now, is she?”

“You’re ashamed,” Doumeki points out.

 _I’m glad you are,_ he thought selfishly, _you took me to you, made me feel that you loved me back, but then you debased me with magic, broke my heart like it was a plaything, and then dropped me off as if I was just trash—like I was worthless and ugly._

“Of course, I’m ashamed!” Watanuki’s expression hardens. “I hurt her. I hurt her so much that I don’t think I could ever bring myself to look at her in the eye again. Has she told you about the last time she was here? Did she tell you that I—”

The horrified expression on Watanuki’s face made Doumeki shift in his position.

“No, she did not tell me,” he answers. “But since we’re speaking truths then I suppose you should tell me about it now.”

 _What do you want from me?_ Doumeki thinks, baiting Watanuki in case he can hear his thoughts, _I have changed in the last seven months. Can the same thing be said about you? Could you ever change?_

Watanuki takes a few breaths and flexes his fingers again but always just the right hand. Doumeki can’t stop noticing it so he asks, “Where’s your pipe?”

Mokona answers, “He’s quit that habit, for understandable precautions.”

“Ah,” Doumeki simply remarks. _Good riddance then, but still a little too late._

“That pipe belonged to Yuuko-san, and I have used it to indulge on opium,” Watanuki explains softly. “I’ve smoked opium for three years. Surely in spite of my extraordinary ties to magic, a drug addiction would still have the same effect on my body and mind. It only took a while for it to manifest. And it manifested in a big way I could never take back.”

“So you blame the drugs,” Doumeki is sounding more upset than he expected for himself but he didn’t care anymore. “The drugs made you hurt your friends?”

Watanuki said nothing. Just as well, because Doumeki’s question didn’t warrant an answer and they both knew that.

“All this talk about regrets,” Doumeki instead points out.  He wishes that Kohane is here, holding his hand like she would, to comfort him and speak on his behalf because there are no words he could say to Watanuki. All he wants to do is kiss him but that will not change anything. Watanuki is still enslaved by his ghosts, by his duty as the shopkeeper, and Doumeki will still grow old and perish one day. Love doesn’t always conquer everything. He knows better than to believe otherwise.

But Watanuki beseeches him. “Doumeki,” he says, “If you don’t want to share your own tales, then all I ask is for you to listen to mine. Will you at least do that?”

Doumeki narrows his gaze, distrust not lessening, but nods nonetheless.

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

After school, Kohane visits Obaa-chan to check up on her. It proved to be a difficult moment for her to leave the elderly woman behind, especially since Kohane’s survival was partly due to her ready acceptance, guidance and compassion. But Obaa-chan is a fortune-teller and that alone gives her a certain advantage. She had told Kohane once that if you know a storm is coming, you can always prepare and you learn to accept the effects. Sometimes, you are given a choice on how to go on with the course of your life even with the storm, because people are always given choices even when it came to things that are inevitable. Kohane hoped she can understand it one day because with her youth and limited experiences she knew she doesn’t know enough about fate and free will. It was why she was hesitant to leave Obaa-chan so she can move in with Shizuka.

A part of her still clings to a lost childhood, still seeks a mentor and a mother to temper her. There remains a durable thread that connects her to a past that chose her, a past muddled by grief, false expectations and a tyrannical parent. Kohane has never closed that chapter in her life. That book is yet to be placed back on a shelf in some dusty corner somewhere.

Obaa-chan didn’t mind her departure, though. Of course she was sad about it but with the wisdom of age and the insight of clairvoyance, she knew more than anyone else, no one should hold tight on things they could never keep. She advised Kohane one last time with: “You’re a young woman now, Kohane-chan, close to twenty. You are loved by a man who wants to spend his life getting to know you. That love has taken root and it will flourish and replenish both of you for the tougher times to come. Stay clear-headed but never forsake your heart.”

 _Yes, I am loved by a man who wants to know me_ , Kohane thought morosely, _I am loved by a man who warms my heart as well as my bed. I always feel more tangible when he holds me at night. But on daybreak we have to separate again and it only serves as a reminder that I’m still connected to someone else far away, whose thread I still hesitate to cut to this day._

She wondered if Obaa-chan knew about Kimihiro-kun and how she felt about him. She wondered if she could ever explain it to the elderly woman someday. Kohane was afraid that perhaps she will never know how, either because of shame or bad timing. All she could hope to do now is to remain devoted to the man she did choose and who chose her back. There is hope in that at least.

Tonight after a gruelling day at the university because of exams, Misaki-sensei drove her to a restaurant out of town which she had been gushing about for weeks. The older woman had a penchant for Hallow’s Eve festivities at that, and picked said date to take Kohane to dinner while Shizuka had to work overnight for some faculty project in his department. It wasn’t exactly a bad thing that he couldn’t go. Kohane enjoyed Misaki-sensei’s company and now that three of them are living together, Kohane has learned to welcome another person into her life who doesn’t have to know every gruesome detail of her past as Shizuka and Kimihiro-kun did. It was nice to be around the older woman who started out as a stranger but was now slowly becoming a second family to her. It worried Kohane at first that Misaki-sensei has agreed to such an unconventional arrangement in the first place when she became Shizuka’s girlfriend out in public to protect Kohane from a scandalous discovery that may even cost Shizuka’s career. As far as she’s concerned, Misaki-sensei is one of the most generous souls she has ever encountered, so she was eager to spend a night with her to further bridge that gap so the two of them will be closer than ever.

The restaurant was a fancy one and Kohane decided to put on a blue cocktail dress that for her had a shorter hemline than she would usually wear. It also fit her body too well, and it was a good thing Shizuka didn’t see her try it on earlier, though he will once she came home tonight. It’s funny how she could be intimate with him so readily whenever they’re under the sheets and surrounded by the darkness of their room, but when they’re together in broad daylight she had to pretend that she doesn’t know him at all, and the several ways his body comes alive for her when she touches it, and how her blood sings and boils as soon as he slides in and takes her captive.

Kohane blinked rapidly when the memories just started flooding her as she walked with Misaki-sensei to the entrance. She really shouldn’t be thinking about that because it’s making her run out of breath. Plus, it’s embarrassing.

“What do you think of the place, Tsuyuri-chan?” Misaki-sensei twirled around in a fashion that almost knocked over a waiter who was passing by. She didn’t notice and continued to talk, “I told you that it’s very atmospheric, didn’t I? The ambiance is as romantic as it could get in a very outdated, gothic sort of way.”

Kohane managed to laugh a little at that for her observations differed strongly from her professor’s. What Misaki-sensei described as ‘romantic’ is clearly an acquired taste. The restaurant was quaint and circular and yet the way the upholstery was placed gave the impression of very tight spaces that required only the most intimate of gatherings to be had inside its establishment. There are maroon curtains that covered tall French windows, which looked like they belong across a stage, lending the restaurant with an air of the theatrical. Mahogany bookshelves were aligned in an interval manner between the windows, and they were stacked with what looked like Western classics. The tables were round with iron candle holders meticulously placed at the heart of each. Kohane supposed that having dinner with candles during Halloween would be considered ‘gothic’. Luckily, the air was humid enough so Kohane felt comfortable loosening her pink shawl from her shoulders, and allowing the silky garment to rest around her elbows as she followed the older woman to their reserved table. Her high heels echoed across the marble floor and she felt self-conscious when she saw a few customers were staring at her as she glided by.

Since Misaki-sensei was the one who invited her and was kind enough to reassure her she will pay for all the expenses (much to Kohane’s earlier protestations in the car), the professor ordered quite a lot from the menu and Kohane wondered if she could truly afford paying for all of this. She doesn’t want to appear ungrateful and discourteous, though, so she ate her share with as much gusto she could muster which wasn’t hard. The food was excellent and Kohane wouldn’t deny that she didn’ expect any of the experience from the dining itself to accompanying Misaki-sensei to be so enthralling. It occurred to her that she had never been out on a real date with Shizuka before, and if there was ever an opportunity that it would be acceptable for them to go out, Kohane would very much prefer a quiet supper much like this one, spellbound by the soft candlelight flickering between them. She wondered if he was overworking himself tonight and prayed he wouldn’t be too tired.

Misaki-sensei must have noticed her glum expression. “Are you not enjoying yourself, Tsuyuri-chan? I hate to have imposed this on you. I knew we should have trick-or-treated instead! I love trick-or-treating, did you know? Have you ever done it?”

“Not at all,” Kohane smiled, remembering about the hauntings on Halloween when she was younger—the ghost marches that would pass by her house. She would listen to the hollow sound of their agony that would slowly drown her head with insidious secondhand longing. It would then make her lungs tighten until she would faint and her mother would have to rush her to the emergency room. This was all before either of them knew about her powers, and once she had learned to understand and use her own psychic abilities—to channel barricades between herself and the unknown—the random hauntings that would visit her finally ceased to overwhelm her. Kohane looked down at her half-empty plate and can’t help but sigh.

“What’s the matter? Are you upset about something? Knowing you better now, I would say you’re quieter than the usual. So can you tell me what I can do? How do I fix this?” Misaki-sensei looked uncomfortable as her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth tightened into a concerned frown. It looked wrong in her face. She looked far more beautiful when talking animatedly, gesticulating passionately with her pale, delicate fingers, radiating warmth and optimism. Kohane would hate to be the reason for the older woman’s light to dim, even just a little, all because Kohane didn’t know how to exude the same kind of charismatic aura.

She tried to smile as she met her favorite professor’s kind eyes. “I’m just not used to doing something like this, sensei. And there is nothing to fix, not at all. I’m just…not a very outgoing person so having dinner with you…with anyone, really…in such a place where there are other people—I just feel like I don’t fit in.”

“First of all, Misaki-san is fine!” The older woman chuckled a melodious one, pushing back her glasses to the bridge of her nose. “We’re in each other’s private company, Tsuyuri-chan so we can at least dispense with the formalities!”

“Yes, my mistake,” Kohane did laugh now and pulled her shawl closer to her. She lowered her gaze again.

“Secondly, if people are staring at you it’s because you are so magical tonight,” Misaki-sensei looked embarrassed when she said that. It was strange. She was always so upfront about her opinions so it wasn’t like her to feel sheepish all of a sudden. There was a stirring in Kohane’s gut that almost took the breath out of her for a moment. She couldn’t say anything else so Misaki-sen… _san_ kept talking.

“What I meant to say is that I was right to pick that dress for you! You look so much more stunning in it than I expected. Gosh, I don’t even know why I bought that for myself years ago. I obviously wouldn’t look as drop dead gorgeous as you do now while wearing it. I feel like I’ve used far too many descriptive adjectives. Did I use far too much of them to describe you? I feel as if you might think I’m being insincere with my compliments if I do that because I’m not being insincere, I totally mean all of the those…adjectives. Maybe a little bit goes a long way, yes? And you are a young lady of simplicity…not a simpleton. Dear gods, no. You’re so wise for such a young age. Now I feel like I’m rambling because I always do that don’t, I? Dammit, Misaki—I should stop,” she inhaled quickly and then exhaled with, “I stopped.”

Kohane managed to only blink in response, too engrossed listening to the older woman just go on and on about her justifications as her cheeks began to flush possibly due to being out of breath. When she recovered, Kohane just laughed. She laughed loudly than she intended to. Her shoulders shook.

Across her, Misaki-san laughed along. It sounded strained at first but after a few more seconds it began to feel much more genuine, and so they just sat there looking at each other as they giggled, and whatever tension that hovered between the earlier had dispersed completely by now. Just in time for dessert.

 

 

 

 

 

_' We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin. '_

\- Andre Berthiaume

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

The biggest obstacle for Watanuki at this point is to find a way to tell both Doumeki and Mokona, as delicately as he could, that he has regained some ounce of his telepathy just a few minutes ago, coincidentally or perhaps consequentially after being reunited with Doumeki. He remembered that Fai had offered an explanation to him months ago concerning the blockage of his powers. It could possibly be partly-psychosomatic. Watanuki glances at Mokona beside him, taking comfort in the knowledge that at least he is his most loyal supporter and ally through all of this. If he never woke up from his deep slumber two months ago, Watanuki couldn’t imagine ever having enough will to try and test the bounds of his magic again.

The last five months before Mokona’s awakening had been…uneventful at best and cripplingly depressing at worst.

From the moment he wakes up or right after finishing up with a customer, Watanuki would spend days inside the lounge by himself, finding ways to take it apart inch by inch with the use of his still fragile mind. This is all done to test Fai’s theory about the wish shop being connected to his magic which would then allow him to apply some physical alterations. He would do the task for three hours, making sure to take it easy and not to strain himself, before he finally reaches the limit of his concentration.

Once this happens, he would take a break from his daunting exercise by climbing up the tree house Kurogane had built for him. Watanuki would use that place as a sanctuary to get away from every claustrophobic thing that plagues him, as well as to replenish his magical reserves. When he is up there, he could see through the houses scattered around the shop, and for just a brief moment of saving grace his world ceased to be small and suffocating. He would feel content; in a place free of his obligations and regrets, free of lingering self-hatred and emptiness of memories. He would watch as a few birds nestle together on the branches and none of them stir as he gazed at them with open interest, as if sensing he wasn’t a danger, and that perhaps he was welcome to join them. Watanuki could spend an hour just listening to the birds chirp and talk to one another, mesmerized by their melodious language, even though he also feels envious that they could build homes as a family while he remains just a stranger looking in from the outside.

“I have something to confess,” he begins now, glancing from Mokona to Doumeki. He ignores the tightness in his chest as he reveals, “As soon as I pulled Doumeki inside the barrier, he and I…touched,” he lowered his gaze, feeling his cheeks tremble because of the tension, “And there was a spark in the channel of my telepathy. It was…instant. I didn’t notice until I started…feeling Doumeki’s sensations in my mind. I don’t have clear access to it completely, of course but…I feel it,” he touches his left temple gently and closes his eyes, “…here, only faint but it’s there.”

There is a pregnant silence among the three of them. And then Doumeki, surprisingly, speaks up first by asking the question Watanuki dreaded the most. “So, you could read my mind since we started this conversation?”

“Not exactly,” Watanuki answers slowly, trying to put it in terms that could be best understood. “It’s not as strong as before, though. Back then, I could easily pick up thoughts, thoughts which are words or images in another person’s mind. Those are primary elements of my telepathy. The secondary one—which I could harness at this moment even without applying focus—is more on…sensations and feelings.”

“Meaning?” Doumeki presses on.

“I cannot read the specific contents of your mind, Doumeki,” Watanuki admits, “but what I can assess are the emotions you are displaying. It’s like reading your moods. Right now I can feel antipathy from you and anxiety.”

Doumeki is quiet and so still from where he sits. He just stares at Watanuki with an indescribable expression on his face. Mokona speaks up after a few more moments.

“You’ve told me about Fai’s explanation concerning the loss of your magic,” Mokona says, “And I agree with his conclusion that it might be psychosomatic. Casting the spell to save Kohane-chan’s life…that contributed to the weakening of your powers but it is truly your subconscious refusal to access your magic that blocks it.”

Watanuki is about to reply but then Doumeki interjects, “Saved Kohane’s life? From what?” He pauses and then hardens his gaze at Watanuki. “What did _you_ do?”

Mokona speaks on his behalf, “You have to understand, Doumeki. Watanuki is beyond our reach during those troubling times, but I was already getting through him by the time Kohane-chan visited him that late afternoon. I don’t know exactly how it happened but—”

“Then let him explain. Let the damn selfish fool explain to me how he hurt Kohane again and why he would even do it!” Doumeki stands up now, his fists clenched to his side. Watanuki is overcome by apprehension and takes a step back and as soon as he does Mokona hops over in front of him, as if to defend him.

“Calm down!” Mokona’s voice deepened into something that takes aback both of them. The creature takes another step toward Doumeki, weighing his next words. “I understand your trepidation. I understand you feel betrayed and heartbroken. But Watanuki’s welfare is my primary concern right now. I promised Yuuko to take care of him, and it had been the most challenging thing in the world, I admit. But I am not ready to give up on him, and in the last few months I saw for myself that _neither does Watanuki want to give up on himself_. And I am not asking you to do the same thing. Heaven knows you owe Watanuki nothing after he has severed his ties with you and Kohane-chan. But if I sense that your presence here will only endanger the process of recovery he has been undergoing then I would kindly, but without remorse, ask you to evacuate the shop.”

Another period of eerie silence stretched on.

Doumeki’s fists unclench. He lowers his gaze, looking apologetic and slightly embarrassed. He looks up and meets Watanuki’s eyes from across the room. The seer is immediately hit by a strong wave of distrust being emitted by the other man, but underneath that was a small undercurrent of _hope_. It almost makes Watanuki want to scream because of anguish building up inside him again.

Mokona looks at Watanuki now and then sighs. “I will leave you two to discuss this some more. Please be on your best behavior,” he shoots Doumeki a warning glance. He hops away and leaves the two men to themselves.

Softly now, Doumeki asks again, “What have you done to her?”

“I,” Watanuki takes a step forward. His voice trembles but he manages to get it out. “I almost killed her.”

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

This is the man he loves.

And Doumeki is hearing his confession of attempted murder.

This is the rain-soaked boy he encountered on that fateful night years ago, contemplating about solitude and demise.

This is the neurotic bundle of nerves who used to cook him delicious meals because it was the only way he could express gratitude and affection.

This is the boy he injured his arm for, sacrificed half of his eyesight for, and offered a large quantity of his blood to.

This is the man he held onto for years, a man who refuses to be saved.

A man he should hate and never forgive for the pain he inflicted not just on Doumeki but on another friend, the woman he is going to marry.

This is Kimihiro Watanuki standing before him after seven months of estrangement, giving him every reason to walk away now and forget he ever knew him, ever valued him, ever hoped that he could build a life with him.

He is the man Doumeki can never stop loving, the one man he can’t afford to ever lose again.

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

They’ve been drinking a little earlier during dinner that as soon as they left the restaurant, both women were visibly and slightly intoxicated. It was twenty minutes close to midnight when they found themselves outside, searching for the car which will hopefully take them back home safely. It was no easy task at first because there was only a single lamppost that illuminated the driveway, and a group of squealing children and teens who are on their way for trick-or-treating managed to distract the older woman once or twice as she tried to chase after them.

Kohane reeled Misaki-san back to reality by grabbing both her shoulders and shaking her awake, even though she herself felt woozy but in the most invigorating way, if that was even possible. She tightened the wrap of her shawl around her neck and shoulders all the while unable to stop giggling at nothing. Beside her was Misaki-san who didn’t fare any better. She was wobbling as she walked, ungracefully tapping her high heels on the pavement without a single care in the world. After a few seconds she sat down on a corner to regain control of herself, and Kohane had no qualms about it as she blissfully leaned against the lamppost.

Five or six minutes passed before Misaki-san finally looked like her normal self again. She took off her heels and dashed to the car, leaving Kohane to run after her, giggling again. As soon as they reached the vehicle, Misaki-san pulled Kohane close to her and held her tightly by wrapping her arms around the younger woman’s waist, as both of them were still breathless from the chase and the laugher that would not cease. Misaki-san kissed her forehead, letting out a soft chuckle, before she lifted the shawl to cover half of Kohane’s face from view. Just as well, Kohane thought, because she could feel her cheeks burn from that unexpected gesture of affection.

Misaki-san opened the passenger’s side so Kohane could go in and then she crossed to the other side and got in, turning on the ignition. Kohane laid her head back and sighed. The wine is almost settling nicely, no longer burdening her head with a weight that she has never been accustomed with. It was akin to the burden she felt when she used to hold séances for the dead, but there was no accompanying fear of the unknown as one gets slightly buzzed with wine, fortunately. She giggled again.

“I shouldn’t have let you drink two glasses, Kohane-chan,” Misaki-san sounded worried again. “That was your drink, wasn’t it? Goddammit, what kind of an adult am I for letting a teenager drink?”

“It’s fine,” Kohane spoke slowly, careful not to slur her words. “And it’s my first wine. I’ve had sake before.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay…” Kohane reached out for her professor’s hand and patted it. “I’m actually glad that all of this has happened. I don’t remember ever having this much fun…with anyone, really. You’ve been so nice to me, and I don’t understand why you’re so nice. What have I ever done to deserve this kindness, sensei?”

“It’s Misaki- _san_ , Kohane-chan,” the older woman squeezed her hand.

Kohane rolled to her side to blink at her professor. She smiled and added, “You…you’ve called me Kohane. I’m so happy.”

Misaki-san just stared at her for a while, and due to the dimness of the car, Kohane can’t read her expression but she assumed only the best. Uncaring about anything else and oddly confident now, she reached out a hand and touched the older woman’s cheek, tracing her fingers from there and then down to her jawline. Misaki-san was so quiet that it’s eerie. The other woman always has something to say. Kohane should have been anxious about this change in behavior but she was still feeling a little floaty, so she ignored whatever apprehension and reservations she may have. She stared at Misaki-san’s thick glasses which have effectively shielded her eyes at this point. She had such kind eyes and it’s a shame to hide them, Kohane thought so she playfully wrenched them away from her professor’s face with her other hand. The pair landed somewhere between them. Misaki-san jerked her head back in response, but she still didn’t say anything. Instead, she reached out and touched Kohane lightly on her shoulder, in a gesture that suggested that she was probably going to push the younger woman back to her seat, and Kohane would happily oblige since the drowsiness is taking over her anyway.

On the last second, however, Misaki-san seemed to have changed her mind. She leaned in closer to Kohane instead and pressed their lips together as she used Kohane’s shoulder for purchase.

Unknowingly, Kohane closed her eyes and took Misaki-san face with both hands to deepen the kiss. They stayed like that for a few more minutes, clumsily fumbling for each other as they exchanged taste and heat. But then Kohane felt something strangling her so she had to pull away but it only got worse and her hair got stuck on something which seemed to have attached itself on Misaki-san’s hair as well.

“Wait,” her professor said, “Let me just…your necklace, I think it got caught—”

“Oh gods…” Kohane suddenly became aware of what she was doing and she was mortified. She tried to disentangle herself but then Misaki-san was stopping her.

“Don’t pull! You’ll ruin the necklace,” the older woman used both hands now, “Here, I’m almost about to get it out—there we go!”

The necklace settled back on Kohane’s chest. She began to cry a little.

“Oh, what’s wrong? I mean, it’s okay. We were just—we were both…oh, I’m so sorry, please don’t cry…” Misaki-san was rubbing her head affectionately, and Kohane became even more aware of the other woman’s nearness and how comforting it was, how it was making her chest twinge and her gut wrench with so many butterflies. She wanted to get away from her but also be engulfed by her arms. It’s so confusing and it hurts especially when she realized that what she was doing was wrong. It was wrong and yet it felt _good_ and _nice_ and Kohane doesn’t understand how that was even possible. It was too much.

“I didn’t mean to, I really shouldn’t have,” Misaki-san started to sound broken.

Kohane took a deep breath as she hurriedly wiped her tears. “I’m sorry too,” she answered, “…I don’t know what happened.”

“I do,” Misaki-san replied, “I never should have taken advantage of you like that.”

“No,” Kohane croaked out. “No, I kissed you back. I wanted to kiss you back. I _like_ you, Misaki-san. I’ve liked you since freshman year. I’ve wanted to know you since.”

“Kohane-chan…”

“This is wrong, isn’t it?”

With her arm still around her shoulder, Misaki-san kept petting her hair. Kohane wished she would stop touching her but that would be a lie. She leaned closer and rested her head against Misaki-san’s chest now, and everything else seemed to spin around her as she continued to quake inside.

“Look,” Misaki-san spoke up, “how about we just move on from this and never talk about it, okay?” No response. “Kohane-chan? Do you agree, Kohane-chan?”

“It was his ring.”

“What was that?”

Kohane wrenched herself away and repeated, “This necklace,” she gripped it and showed it to Misaki-san, “I couldn’t wear it around anymore on my hand for understandable reasons. But this was the promise ring he gave to me months ago.”

When her professor said nothing, she went on, “Shizuka has been…the best there is. He is my best friend. He helps me all the time. He cared for me. He understood me. And someday, I think…” she trailed off, gathering her courage. Finally, she added. “I think someday he can fall in love me. And I probably could too.”

“What?” Misaki-san took her hand which was still clutching the ring, “But you told me that you do love him, and that the two of you love each other.”

“It’s more complicated that that.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Misaki-san was beginning to sound frantic. “You don’t force love. You just can’t. And sure, love can happen eventually but there has to be a spark first which would then ignite. I thought this is what you and Doumeki-san have. You certainly had me convinced. You have moved in together. You sleep on his bed. Is it simply…lust?” She corrected herself by shaking her head forcefully, “no, no, you’re not that type of girl. There is something else, isn’t it? There is something that binds the two of you together; something that makes this entire charade bearable.”

 _Someone_ , Kohane thought, _there is someone we love who makes it all worth the sacrifice._

“Kohane-chan,” Misaki-san shook her shoulder once, “Please talk to me, Kohane-chan. I am still your friend. And I’m worried about you. Why are you and Doumeki-san together if you don’t really love each other in the first place?”

“I do love him,” Kohane proclaims and then softly adds, “…just—just not in the way we both want.”

Misaki-san let her go. She withdrew her arm and placed both her hands on her lap as she finally turned her body away from Kohane so she was once again facing the wheel. She was quiet for a whole minute before she remarked, “It’s your decision, Kohane-chan. It’s both of yours. I am in no position to argue or criticize, of course, but I’m just…so sad about this. When I offered my help to solve your situation, I was under the impression that I was helping a young love weather the storm. I really…really believed you and Doumeki-san are happy.”

“We are,” Kohane doesn’t sound convinced herself but she pressed on. “We are grateful for everything you have done so far. And we are happy together, Shizuka and I. The love we share—only the two of us should have the right to define it. Other people will never understand our choice, but it’s like you said—it’s still _our_ choice. I do hope you can understand that, Misaki-san. And that you won’t condemn us—”

“Never!” Misaki-san interjected with a nervous chuckle, “I’ve considered you my friends too in the last few months. I care about you both. I’m just…”

She sighed. “I don’t know. I’m certainly not standing on any moral ground right now, after what I just did…”

“No,” Kohane shook her head and added, “No, please don’t worry about what happened earlier. We were both…we were both a little drunk, weren’t we? It’s nothing. It shouldn’t mean anything other than a lapse in judgment.”

Misaki-san was frowning. She picked up her pair of glasses from where it had fallen and pushed it back to the bridge of her nose. She looked at the key in the ignition for a while and then she flipped on the switch to the AC and started to move the car. Kohane just waited, sitting there as patiently as she could as she tried to calm her nerves. Her cheeks still feel like they are on fire and she was out of breath as if she had just run for miles and miles. She sneaked glances at the older woman and pondered what was going on her mind right now.

After another few minutes of driving in silence, Misaki-san opened her mouth again and said, “I agree about what you said—about everything. You and Shizuka deserve to see this through, whatever it is, and I shouldn’t interfere. I’m sure both of you can figure it out because I trust you and I trust him.”

She paused. And then, “I’m sorry for what I did earlier. It won’t happen again. You were right. We got carried away and it was a mistake.” She sounded far away when she said that, and she kept her eyes on the road the entire time.

Kohane just nodded meekly in response and she was glad that Misaki-san didn’t try to get a more verbal answer for her. Kohane leaned back on her seat and closed her eyes. She wrapped the shawl tighter around her again for comfort, but there was a chill in her bones that she was afraid will never go away.

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

“How did it happen?” Doumeki asks and Watanuki can see that he is trying to control himself from getting angry again. He could still feel the continuous wave of doubt and hope coming from the other man. “How did you hurt her?”

Watanuki takes another step forward. “She and I were talking about…she was telling me how she felt about me. Kohane-chan said that she…that she was—” he closes his eyes, “—she said she was in love with me.”

“She is.” Doumeki simply replies.

“Oh,” Watanuki frowns. His tongue feels thick but he kept going. “Okay. So you—right. Um, I guess…well, what happened next was that I…I was so scared of losing her in that moment…and to you at that since you kissed her back then and...” He shakes his head, disgusted of himself. “I’m not proud of what I did. I was a shitty person and I forced myself on her… but I stopped! I stopped before it could even go further, I swear to the gods, Doumeki—I didn’t…I never wanted to hurt her—”

“Stop justifying yourself,” Doumeki interjected. “Just fucking tell me how you almost killed her.”

Watanuki nods vigorously and then rambles, unable to contain himself, “I-I was inside her h-head for a w-while. It was awful. I just went in there and I—I could feel her e-everywhere…and I could read her thoughts—this—this— _outpour_ of her love for me and it was—I was so ashamed. I saw how deeply I meant to her, how much she wanted to save me from all the destruction I inflicted on myself and—I just,” he could feel the tears coming and he doesn’t stop them from leaking.

His knees give up on him next and he ends up sobbing to the floor as he goes on, “I just knew I made a mistake—a-and then s-she started to stop… _breathing_ , and I was…I killed her. In those brief few seconds, I killed her!” He wraps his arms around him, sobbing horribly into the ground as he bends down, watching the tear smudges on the floor. He swallows and continues, “I was desperate. I was so desperate that only one spell came to mind. It was…costly…but I didn’t care. I used it—and she was alive. She was okay. I banished her from the shop while I still had the power to do so—so she’ll be safe and away from me. So I can never, never, _ever_ hurt her again.”

Watanuki looks up and wipes the tears and snot away with the sleeves of his kimono. His eyes sting. He couldn’t open them. He started muttering the words now, barely audible and coherent. “I couldn’t...breathe after. It was like being trapped in my own body. Mokona came to…help. He was knocked unconscious…for months he was asleep. I was just…and on my birthday I was…alone but I visited Himawari-chan in a dream—and then Syaoran came and I was…I was…I don’t know, I don’t know, I-I h-have no…idea that I…goddammit! _Godammit! Goddammit!_ _Goddammit!_ ”

He starts pounding on the ground with his fists as he howls in frustration.

Suddenly he feels somebody clutching his wrists, hindering his blows. His fists are numb from the repeated contact on the cemented ground but he doesn’t want to stop. Watanuki is trying to pull away but Doumeki grasps him tightly.

“Let go!” Watanuki shouts, “You have—you have got to be kidding me! What are you— _why_ are you still here? You have to _run_! Doumeki, you have to run as fast as you can and never look back. I’m…I don’t…you should _never_ forgive me!”

“Shut up!” Doumeki’s voice cracks as he speaks, “Shut up and stop hurting yourself!”

“But I—”

“But nothing!” Doumeki shouts now and his tears spills easily as he does, “I don’t want any of this! I am so mad at you and you may be right to say that I shouldn’t forgive you…but I don’t want to see you like this!” He grips Watanuki tighter and then wraps both arms around him, pulling him back on his feet. He leans his weight against Watanuki and kisses his forehead—his cheeks—his lips. Before Watanuki could wrap his arms around him, Doumeki wrenches away but keeps his tight grip on his shoulders. “Listen to me,” he speaks, voice hoarse, “if you really want to change, if you really want to make things right for her, and for me, then stop being so sad and depressed and angry all the time…” he chokes back another sob and says, “all we ever wanted was for you to…be happy. With us. Without all this bullshit about the wish shop, and the stubborn belief that Yuuko-san is coming back.”

“Doumeki—”

He starts shaking Watanuki violently. “She is fucking dead, Watanuki!”

“I-I know…” Watanuki still doesn’t want to believe it. He refuses to accept because he should have told her how much he loves her. He wasn’t able to say goodbye properly. And so Watanuki is haunted by her memory where he still sees her when he closes his eyes—where he can still hear her in the walls and across the empty spaces of the shop—in the whisper of silk that touches his body when he puts on her kimono—and in the heat of the opiates that fill the rooms when he shares the taste of her pipe and pretends that she has never left; that she had never died.

“Watanuki,” Doumeki shakes him again. “Please…”

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “I—I am so, so, sorry.”

“Okay,” Doumeki pulls him close for another embrace. “Okay.”

“It’s not okay.”

“But it could be. If you really mean it…”

“Oh, I do!” Watanuki pulls away so he can cup Doumeki’s cheeks. “Oh, I do, my beautiful, beautiful friend. I mean it! I want to change. I want to be a part of your lives again. I’m sorry that I even made you both feel like there was no place for you in my heart. Because you—you and Kohane-chan—” he takes Doumeki’s hand and presses it against his chest, “…you are both here. You’ve always been here and I was just too weak and stupid to tell either of you how much…how much I—”

“I love you,” Doumeki interrupts, kissing both of Watanuki’s hands. “I love you, I love you, I love you, and it’s killing me. It’s literally _killing me_.”

“I know,” Watanuki sobs out. “Gods, I know. I feel you. I feel everything you’re feeling right now—and I share it. Gods, Doumeki, you’re so…you’re so…”

He lunges forward and kisses the breath out of Doumeki again. They fumble clumsily for each other, unmindful of everything else.

When it ends, it ends too soon, and Watanuki gasps out, “…you’re so beautiful,” he smiles and rubs Doumeki’s cheeks with his hands as he looks into his eyes. He clears his throat and adds, “You’re the most beautiful, kind-hearted and loyal person I have ever had the pleasure and honor of being loved by.”

Doumeki smiles back but he looks so sad when he does. Watanuki forces himself to ignore it and enfolds the other man in his arms once more.

“And I know about how you feel about Kohane-chan,” he murmurs into his ear, “I’m happy for you both. If there are two people who deserve each other, it’s you and her.” He tightens his embrace and says, “I don’t want you to have any regrets or to feel guilty about your relationship. I was honestly praying for it! I’m so, so relieved to hear that you found happiness together!”

Doumeki pulls away slightly to look at him. Watanuki could sense some sort of discomfort and hesitation coming from him this time. He answers, “She and I have found a way to make it work. And she is important to me. I care about her.”

 _But do you love her?_ Watanuki shakes away the question from his head and smiles wider. “I hope you can tell her that I’m ready to see her again. I miss her so much. And I still owe her many explanations.”

“Yes,” Doumeki’s relief washes over the both of them. “Yes, she would like that very much. She’s been so worried about you. She has never stopped worrying.”

“I know,” Watanuki rests his forehead on Doumeki’s chest. “And I want to see her. I could never truly move forward if I don’t apologize to her for the things I’ve done…and the fact that I almost—”

“Stop saying it like that,” Doumeki lifts his face up with his hands. The two of them just stare at one each other like that, daring themselves for another kiss. Watanuki senses the guilt creeping not just from Doumeki but also from his end so he takes Doumeki’s hands and lowers them down from his face. He lets him go and takes a step back. Doumeki doesn’t argue. He simply nods.

Doumeki and Kohane are together. Watanuki needs to respect that and he does.

Both men stand there for a while, just looking at each other.

It is awful. It is staring at the one and only thing they have ever wanted and could have had, but never will.

They both understand at this point that whatever they might have been back when they still had all the time in the world to explore it; back when their feelings were still new and fresh and worth the trouble—all of that now is over.

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

 

It is two in the morning when Misaki Kuwabara finds herself walking alone in an empty street leading to nowhere.

Something about this feels like a dream.

It couldn’t have been because her bare feet are freezing and she is still wearing the same purple dress from her dinner date with Kohane.

She slows down her steps.

_Kohane Tsuyuri._

Misaki feels like running, so she does. Her heart feels heavy on her chest. She is losing her breath but she is beyond caring.

She runs until she can’t run anymore.

Misaki collapses to the ground and breathes in the asphalt of the cold pavement. She squeezes her eyes shut and wills herself to wake up.

She doesn’t.

She pulls herself from the ground and blinks wearily at the house before her. It looks familiar but she couldn’t place it. There is something odd about it, though. She tries to memorize the details of the house’s structure but finds that she couldn’t retain the memory long enough to describe it even to herself, inside her head. She steps forward, testing the realness around her one last time before she is finally convinced that if she is dreaming, this has to be the most vivid and interactive one she has ever experienced. Though Misaki has considered herself a woman of science for a very long time now, but she is still a Japanese woman who grew up in a small town and whose family always visits a temple weekly. She adheres to old traditions herself, and finds solace in the beauty of landscape, in the worship of trees and mountains.

Misaki knows this is no ordinary dream. There is magic here. She can feel it in her bones. She has never encountered magic before but she’s sure this is how it would feel like. Taking slow, deep breaths, she begins to walk.

Rather, she can’t help herself.

She’s walking right inside the house’s yard.

Misaki opens the door and is struck by how eerily quiet it is inside. Still, she is thankful that she has no shoes on so she just starts walking ahead, past the dimly lit hallway until she reaches a large pair of sliding doors. She opens them.

She knows she’s in the right place. She knows she is supposed to be here.

But Misaki doesn’t know why.

“I’m here to tell you,” a voice speaks. She turns her head to look at the young man sitting at a sofa, and there was a furry cord wrapped around his arm. She squints and realizes it is some sort of animal. It curls around the young man’s arm as if it’s snuggling for warmth. She tears her eyes away to look back at the man in question.

He is no more than a boy, really. Maybe sixteen? Seventeen?

When their gazes meet, Misaki realizes that his eyes are not that of a young boy’s at all. They are mismatched in color, full of deep knowing, and he smiles with a heartbreaking sadness that makes Misaki feel humbled. She ends up sitting on her haunches before him immediately.

“Welcome, my dear,” he speaks to her.

“Where am I?” she asks.

“You, Misaki Kuwabara,” he pronounces her name as if he has said it many times before, “…are inside a shop that grants wishes.”

She isn’t surprised at all. She knew she was supposed to be here.

“So, tell me…” the seemingly ancient boy asks her, leaning in with his elbow on one knee as his other arm gestures at her; the arm where the creature is still wrapped around it, clinging for life.

“What is your heart’s greatest desire?”

 

 

 

 

 

_‘ What a frightening thing is the human; a mass of gages, and dials and registers, but we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately. ’_

\- John Steinbeck

 

 

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Misaki Kuwabara is given an opportunity to change her fate as Watanuki struggles not to misuse his powers again.

 

 

 

 

 

**122: Mysterious Stranger**

* * *

 

 

 

The boy sitting across from Misaki is beautiful. His one eye is a golden brown while the other is a deep shade of blue. In the dim light of the room where an assortment of lanterns surrounded them, the boy’s features are illuminated in the most flattering way imaginable, and Misaki must have blinked several times already just to make sure he is very much real. It seems to her that this lovely boy simply exists like a mirage before her; an intangible being with no visible contours in his body or rough edges to speak of.  Draped in a red kimono that looks a shade darker because of the lanterns, the boy sits on a white leather sofa that resembles a big clam shell, as if he is getting ready to be painted or photographed.

Disconcertingly enough, he stares into her like he is marking her soul. Misaki shivers and absentmindedly tightens her hands into fists above her lap. He is as beautiful as he is a little horrific, and she isn’t sure why she didn’t run away from the moment she came to be here.

A rational part of her grasps to defend her decision. This is all an illusion and she is still in her bed right now, back at the safety of her shared living quarters with Doumeki and Kohane, and none of this is real. All she has to do is play along for now.

“I am dreaming, am I not?” she asks the boy in a hushed tone.

He nods once, still cradling that furry creature wrapped around his arm. He regards her with an expression of curiosity mixed with something else she could not name.

“And you said that this is a shop that grants wishes?” she asks again.

He smiles this time, running his fingers on the creature on his arm. The gesture is filled with tenderness that she can’t help but ogle.

The boy speaks up, “You came to me yourself. I sensed your presence. Did you know? Your wanton needs are bleeding through the astral plane where I remain connected to. This is…” he pauses, pouts a little and then renews his smile, “…this is the first time I’ve been in someone else’s dreamscape again. I haven’t slept too deeply in the last few months, possibly fearful that I may never wake up.” He shifts in his seat by resting an arm on the sofa’s ledge. In doing so, his loose kimono slips to reveal a smooth surface of skin. Misaki couldn’t help but gaze at his exposed shoulder and clavicle, and her eyes linger on the pale complexion of his chest peeking through the fabric. The contrast of it against the dark crimson of his kimono is striking. Either unaware or uncaring of her stare, the boy maintains the slack posture and goes on.

“I must take this as a good sign. It means I’m gaining back the use of my powers. Whatever was holding me back, incapacitating me from utilizing the dreamscape and my telepathy—I must be slowly overcoming it. Mind you,” he gestures a hand towards her and she squirms, “I suppose you have a role to play in this. I was on the verge of madness long ago, and now I’m on my way to recovery. I should thank you, Misaki Kuwabara. No one has been able to communicate with me in dreams until now,” he smiles with a kind of gratitude tinged with sadness.

“Until you.”

He stands now, and his kimono slips again from both shoulders this time. With a graceful air of someone who doesn’t mind his nakedness underneath, the boy simply gathers the silky garment closer to his body and a yellow sash appears out of nowhere and wraps itself around his waist, securing the clothing from falling off again. Misaki narrows her eyes and realizes that the sash is no other than the furry creature from earlier. It snuggles around the boy’s waist easily as if it belonged there all along. She is preoccupied observing the odd creature that she almost gasps when she looks up and sees that the boy is already just a yard away from her, towering above her without being imposing. Misaki swallows something thick in her throat and then stands up as well. She is relieved to find they are of the same height.

“Why am I here?” Misaki asks.

He arches an eyebrow. “Don’t you know?”

“I…I’m not…” the unexpected anxiety is making her a little nauseous so she breathes out an almost silent, “…no.”

“This is your dreamscape,” he answers, “And you have called me to your aid.”

“I don’t know you,” she says, “I don’t understand any of this.”

“My name is Watanuki,” he replies, his hand reaching out to take hers. She lets him do it. Squeezing her hand gently inside his, he adds, “I’m a seer who can grant wishes. You are inside my wish shop which has appeared in your dreamscape. Of course, it sounds far-fetched; some crazy delusion—but feel this,” he gives her hand another squeeze, “that is real. I am real—this might be a dream, but somewhere out there I’m inside my own shop, the one that physically exists in the waking world. Right now I’m here with you in your dreamscape. You reached out to me and I accepted.”

“But why?” she is trembling again, “why would I do that?”

“Because,” the boy Watanuki leans forward as he cups her chin with his other hand in a gesture both intimate and impersonal, “you have a wish.”

Misaki starts blinking fast. Her ceaseless rapid heartbeat is destroying her chest as she stands there, staring into his mismatched eyes. She is about to speak up again when he lets her go completely and takes a step back. He looks worried about something and before she could ask—

“Find me again in the waking world,” he tells her as he takes a few steps backward again, holding her gaze. “The dream is nearing its end. But fret not….”

Misaki is reaching for him now, both hands trying to clutch at him but there is only air between her fingers when she tries to touch him again.

“…we shall meet again,” his voice sounds far away.

She could see a wisp of blue smoke in front of her, an ethereal light inside a darkness where she could hardly even make out her own body. Desperately though, she tries to catch it, and she almost succeeds too before her eyes open and she meets the blank ceiling hovering above her. Her arms are outstretched, hands still probing for purchase. Misaki’s chest starts to hurt for no other reason except for the cold reminder of grief and abandonment from long ago, and against her will she lets out a choked sob. She turns to her left side and pulls up her legs until her knees touched her chin. While holding her shrunken frame with both arms like that as she remained under her sheets, silent tears begin to stream down her cheeks.

 _He is gone,_ she tells herself over and over.

The worst part is that she isn’t even talking about that strange, beautiful boy who appeared in her dreams and told her she has a wish he could grant.

Misaki squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that the agonizing throbbing of her heart would stop soon. _He is gone_ , she tries telling herself again, knowing that if she repeats it often enough right now, rational thinking would take over once more and she could function like a normal person again before breakfast.

She tries to be aware of her surroundings now, acquainting herself with the brightness of the sunlight seeping through the curtains and the shapeless forms of the objects around her room until her tear-stained eyes finally adjust and she can see again, even with the haziness of her nearsightedness. Misaki slowly sits up and reaches for the bedside table where her glasses are. She wipes her eyes hurriedly with one hand and then puts on the pair. She sits there for a moment, gathering her breath, emptying her thoughts from what she had dreamed earlier, before she finally gets out of bed. Her clock reads eight-thirty.

Both Doumeki and Kohane get up at nine. Misaki starts to get apprehensive. More time to herself means more time for silent reflection. This will only make her think about _him_ , and that boy in her dreams. She can’t have any of that. So instead she pulls out an old thick Algebra book from her shelves and slams it almost loudly on her desk. She then pulls out the chair and plops herself in it as she begins to solve random quadratic equations. This should preoccupy her enough for the next thirty minutes. Afterwards, she will make the three of them breakfast.

Mathematics has always been a solace for her, even as a child. Numbers made better sense than people ever did, as far as Misaki is concerned. When she’s solving equations like this, she is less likely to care about her own mortal sufferings. Better yet, she can believe—even for just a stretch of an hour—that she was invincible.

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 Watanuki pronounces her name for the second time as soon as he wakes up.

“Misaki Kuwabara,” he emphasizes each syllable as he slowly pulls himself up from the sofa. He starts to breathe in and out, with each interval for air lasting for a few seconds in between. He still keeps his eyes closed the entire time, savoring what little remnants of her dreamscape were left in his mind. To be able to touch another person’s consciousness again reminds him all too well how easy it is to forget all the progress he has made in the last seven months, and just give in to the heightened sensations it brings. He opens his eyes and blinks away whatever tempting notion he may have about widening the reach of his channel to flip through frequencies once more, determined not to lose himself to that addictive activity yet again.

Mugetsu curls itself around Watanuki’s hip bone, squeezing in intervals as Watanuki breathes in and out. When the seer is finally calm again, it slithers upwards and wraps around his neck in a protective embrace. Watanuki reaches run his fingers through its warm fur. Mugetsu slides loose just a little so he can peck his cheek.

“Thank you,” Watanuki whispers, “even when I shut you out all those months ago, you never got angry at me. I don’t deserve your kindness, sweet creature.”

Mugetsu slides off completely from his neck and hovers before him, an ethereal wisp with a hypnotizing gaze Watanuki meets bravely.

“I wonder what you’d say if you could speak,” Watanuki says, “Would you have said something then? I knew you…I knew you felt her come here. And you were ready to defend me and I—” he closes his eyes, feeling the bitterness in his tongue, “…I cast you off to some vessel because I didn’t want your interference. I was,” he opens his eyes and reaches out for Mugetsu, “…I was so arrogant. And determined to hurt anyone and anything I can overpower. And that included the Jorougumo…and you.”

Mugetsu leans in to his touch anyway in spite of his confession. Watanuki blinks away the tears that are forming. “You are a protective spirit. You function to ward off evil,” he pauses, swallowing the lump in his throat before he continues, “and here you are. You’ve stayed. Could that mean…could that mean I am still… _good_?”

He gulps down again. “Sometimes I don’t believe it. It’s not just because of self-doubt. It’s just that—every time I feel this much power again…” he flexed his fingers as if he could channel the flow of magic in his joints, “…I’m so terrified it’s going to make me rotten once more,” he pauses and shakes a little, feeling dizzy. “You don’t…you don’t find me repulsive at all, do you?”

As if in confirmation, Mugetsu wraps itself around his neck again and pecks his cheek twice. Watanuki chuckles, a tear rolling down his other cheek. His chest loosens and he breathes out again, more naturally than moments ago.

“Thank you,” he repeats, his hand pressed against the expanse of its furry body. “Thank you for believing. Thank you for not giving up on me. I’m going to be—I’m going to prove I’m worthy of that. So thank you.”

There is so much more at stake for Watanuki now. He still has plenty more to lose, and they are those he must hold onto more dearly this time.

 

 

**xXx**

Misaki turned on the radio to her favorite station. In twenty minutes she was placing the meals on the table and finished brewing her special coffee. Well, she just puts cinnamon in it, but Kohane once said she liked it a lot, so Misaki kept doing it. She supposed she only called it ‘special’ because it had something to do with the younger woman. Kohane Tsuyuri means a lot to her. She sometime wished she didn’t though.

Misaki tried not to feel guilty when she thought about what happened between her and Kohane two nights ago. But there was nothing to feel guilty about. They both agreed that it was a lapse of judgment, a mere oversight, and won’t happen again. Also, on spite of whatever opinions she may have about the arrangement Kohane and Doumeki have regarding the intimacy of their relationship, Misaki will never allow herself to feel any kind of resentment about it. She doesn’t know enough. She will probably never know their reasons why because they are entitled to keep them secret. She doesn’t have to get involved.

She repeated all this logical reasoning to herself for the third time today.

Five minutes later, the happy couple came around to the dining room to break fast with Misaki. The three of them barely said anything to each other except the ritual greetings. The two women across from each other while Doumeki was between them, sipping his coffee contentedly while eating his eggs. Kohane doesn’t seem to have that much of an appetite. Misaki knew she had to start a conversation soon or her companions would think something was wrong. There isn’t.

For her part, Misaki filled at least ten minutes of idle chatter, alternating breezily among choice topics because it has become her natural setting in every day social interaction for years now. Misaki can drown out the silence with the sound of her voice and entrance those who listen. She will never be alone or feel alone this way. She’s gifted with words as much as she was with numbers. And right now Misaki needed to keep the pretense intact for the three of them because the alternative is unthinkable. Misaki cared about the two of them, more than she would even admit to herself some days. She’d like to keep them company now more than ever because she knows the truth this time.

The alternative would be confronting either of them about what they are doing. The alternative would be to move out and let them worry about the rumors and speculations going around the university regarding their relationship outside teacher-student. But these are alternatives Misaki could never see herself fulfilling. To leave them alone when she could tell how much of a cavalry this all has been would be cruel and selfish. To ask them to justify their decision to be a in a relationship would be even crueler. Besides, Misaki didn’t doubt that they do love each other. There is real understanding and affection between them.

But as she sat there observing these two people who would exchange infrequent glances here and there as they go about the trivialities for today, Misaki realized what she should have recognized before.

They were never in love. They live together and probably lean on each other for support and guidance, but it struck her that it was only because of habit. Kohane and Doumeki have known each other for a long time and that familiarity is comfortable and safe. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the feelings they share were simply bred out of luck or convenience. It seemed to Misaki, based on personal experience, that nothing can bring two people closer together than when they have suffered a tragedy.

That’s what seems to be binding Kohane and Doumeki so tightly together. They’ve experienced pain and it was a shared burden they choose to carry for one another.

Misaki was either going to have to contend herself with this reality—or figure out exactly what kind of tragedy these two are intent on weathering together, and perhaps help them with the weight of it all.

 

 

**xXx**

 

Watanuki feels her coming in.

He could sense her steady heartbeat as much as he could press his hands readily on the hollow impressions of wounds that have never healed. They now reside in her mind and spirit, migrating there for safekeeping. He doesn’t probe them any deeper. He simply applies soft touches on the surface, testing its depth without any more intrusive disturbance.

Watanuki traces circles around it with his thumb, and the skin of her mind becomes instantly pliant, granting him access. She lets him slide in, and he navigates as carefully as he could, smoothing the rough edges of only the corners that she wants him to touch. He treads with utmost caution and respect, ensuring he doesn’t leave his own personal imprints.

Once they’ve made contact, he could sustain the mental link for at least ten minutes. It’s enough. He beckons her to walk with a single suggestive image, and she obeys because she wants to—she wants Watanuki to serve her. And he obeys because he is bound to the duty. There is a wish that needs granting.

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

When she opens her eyes she is standing inside the shop again. The doorway seems narrower but the space is brighter than the last time she was here. She has been dreaming then, and this no longer felt like one. Misaki could even remember walking home from work and leaving her car in its parking space. Somehow, she was compelled to walk until she found herself inside the shop which she knows by now can truly grant wishes. _He_ can grant her wish, the beautiful boy with mismatched eyes. Misaki feels like she wanted to know him, wanted to trust him, wanted to understand why he is what he is. It terrifies her.

“It’s okay,” she could hear his soothing voice from somewhere inside. She takes a tentative step forward. And another. She is walking towards the sound of his voice.

Misaki found him in that white sofa again. He stares at her with an empty yet not unkind smile as he greets her, “Good evening, Misaki Kuwabara.”

“Good evening...” she stops abruptly, trying to recall until—

“…Watanuki,” she blinks rapidly afterwards, looking ashamed.

“Watanuki-san,” Misaki repeats, addressing him more formally.

He merely smiles at that and gestures for her to sit. When she looks around, she finds two girls carrying a chair. They push her down using their playful hands, grinning at her, cooing at her.

“Did I not tell you that we will see each other again?” he inquires.

“I’m here,” she begins, “because you said you can give me what I need.”

“Yes,” the boy places his chin in one of his palms as he rests his elbow on a knee. “And what do you need?”

Misaki doesn’t even hesitate. “Clarity.”

Watanuki nods once. He gently gestures with his other hand, “Your glasses,” he asks.

Trembling, Misaki removes her glasses. “What about them?”

“Give them here,” he requests.

One of the girls takes them from her and hands it to Watanuki.

“It’s not of sight that you ask clarity for but for your own heart,” he explains as he stares down the glasses, tracing the red frame with a tenderness that made Misaki’s stomach flip for no reason other than anxiety and misplaced nostalgia. “You are burdened with an intimate knowledge of things most people don’t actively seek out. You are intelligent and insatiable when it comes to learning. Curiosity and discovery come naturally to you,” he looks up at her and smiles wider.

Misaki doesn’t know how to respond to that. Usually, she would be glib and could come up with a clever if not dismissive retort. But there is something so off-putting about the boy that renders her completely speechless at this moment.

“To you, answers are everything,” The boy Watanuki continues, “and to be deprived of them is to feel as if you have been starved and malnourished.”

Misaki just nods.

“But the world is often built on uncertainties. Ambiguities can never be avoided.”

Misaki sighs. Her fists clench on her lap involuntarily.

“You’ve lost someone.”

She closes her eyes now, intent on not crying.

“This pair belongs to him.”

When she opens her eyes again, he is standing before her. She almost jumps out of her chair but then he starts to run a sympathetic hand through her hair. He is showing her the glasses. “The clarity you seek…I can grant it.”

“Good,” is all she could say to that.

“But for a price.”

“I figured as much.”

Watanuki lifts the pair. “This is the price.”

Misaki slowly gets up from her chair. “Wh-What does that mean?”

“I will grant your wish for clarity in exchange of something that is of equal value,” Watanuki speaks in an odd, slow cadence, as if he is tasting his own words. “The clarity you seek is something connected to the ambiguities you’ve faced in the past, and not just with the death of someone you love. That is the one with the heaviest and longest impact, however, and this is the last piece of him that you have kept. Its value is measurable to that of the answer that you seek.”

“And you’re taking it away,” Misaki’s eyes start watering now. “For your information, that someone you spoke of so casually was the greatest love of my life. We were…we were supposed to marry. And the he died. I know I’m not getting him back. I have no delusions or ambitions of resurrecting the dead. I’m not that arrogant to believe I’m entitled to a second chance. But what I want now is…that fortitude—that sense of knowing that I can make myself whole again because…it still feels as if…as if I’ve lost my way and just couldn’t get back on the right track anymore. It’s like…”

She closes her eyes and then opens them again. “Everyone has moved on with their lives. But it’s like I’m still stuck here. Standing still.”

Watanuki nods in response.

“But you just know all of that before even meeting me? Just like that?” She doesn’t want to sound angry but she is, “Did you use magic to know about it?”

Watanuki frowns and hands her back the glasses. “I will never claim to understand your pain. It is your own. It is unique to you. I am only here because you call to me.”

“I’m the one who found myself in your shop.”

“Only because you wanted to be here,” he reaches out to brush his knuckles on her cheek. She doesn’t flinch away but she does look down to the ground.

Misaki looks at the glasses in her hands. She cups them as if in reverence. A few moments later, she is handing them back to him. Watanuki takes it, his gaze never leaving her face. She meets it evenly now.

“And my wish is granted after this?” she asks again, wanting a guarantee. “By offering you the only thing I have to remember him by?” she wipes her tears with one hand, “…and in exchange for that I can…I can finally—?”

The boy Watanuki is smiling at her, but it was the saddest thing that has ever crossed his features. Against her own will, Misaki found herself reaching out to cup his cheek. His eyes widen an inch by the gesture but he didn’t say anything.

“Tell me,” she mutters, “have you ever had a wish granted for yourself?”

He blinks at her.

“I can only surmise that you must have started somewhere,” Misaki says, “I figured…maybe once you were just like me. I could…feel that maybe you are human. Or that maybe once you were. This shop…you say it grants wishes? And you are the only one who lives here and grants them?” she pauses and then continues, “but how did you end up doing this? I know you’re older than you look but…not that old.”

Watanuki smiles genuinely at her now. “You are too insightful for your own good.”

Misaki smiles back as she lets her hand fall from his face. “I’ve been told.”

"Are you sure you need clarity? After all, there are some things one is better not knowing."

A short silence followed.

Hesitantly, she asks him, “Did you lose someone too?”

“Of course,” he answers with a sad chuckle, “everybody has lost someone at one point. It’s the oldest story in the world.” He lifts the glasses in view, smiling at her. “And yet, that tragedy is probably the one thing that connects us all.”

Misaki sighs. “Yes, I suppose it does.” A pause. “Who did you lose?”

“A mentor,” he replies, looking down wistfully, “A very important friend, and a love that could have flourished but now couldn’t.”

She opens her mouth to say something in response, but the words wouldn’t come to her at first. When they did, she merely phrased them into another question. “Were you describing three people just now?”

The boy Watanuki smiles gently, veiling the sorrows underneath it, but Misaki sees them clearly nonetheless. When he didn’t answer her at all, she immediately understood.

Misaki looks down at her beloved’s pair of glasses one last time and then gives Watanuki a nod to signify her agreement to the exchange.

He nods at her in return and she knew that he just granted her wish.

She walks out of the shop, feeling less insecure about her troubles. It allows her some room to feel sympathy for that beautiful, lonely boy she is leaving behind.

 _They say that one should never get comfortable with heartbreak_ , she thought sullenly to herself, _and I think that boy already is_.

Misaki holds a closed fist to her chest. _But then again—so am I._

 

 

 

 

_‘ When so many are lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone. ’_

 -Tennessee Williams

 

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doumeki continues to debate about the choices he has yet to make while Kohane tries to renew her severed connection with her lost love. Meanwhile, Watanuki confides in Mokona and writes to Syaoran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KOHANE-CHAN!~**   
> 
> 
>   
>  Phew, I swear that writing this story will be the death of me one of these days. It gets to me sometimes. Every chapter is agonizing to write because everyone is just so sad and depressing all the time. There are so many emotional nuances to each character that I have to explore, and struggle to go about some days because of other obligations in life.
> 
> Writing Doumeki and Kohane's POVs can be distressing too because of the general amount of unrequitedness they have for Watanuki. On the other hand, Watanuki is trying to be a good person again, but needs to come to terms that he has darkness inside him, and he can't just wish it away. It's already a part of him.
> 
> I have already made an outline for the upcoming events and chapters for this fic, and yet I still dread so many aspects to it that I have yet to write. I hope you readers are still interested to see where this is headed. Enjoy the journey with me, will you? :D
> 
>   
> 

 

 

 

**359: Harbor**

* * *

 

 

 

**May 2, 2012**

 

 

_I haven’t slept in three days._

_It has become especially harder to fall back to slumber because I’m afraid of what is waiting for me once I close my eyes and drift to the endless stretch of dreams. There is no anchor binding me which could keep me firmly implanted on shore._

_I could just sleep forever and feed off from the nightmares of my own creation._

_It’s been almost a month since Syaoran and the others left, and only Maro and Moro keep me company. Mokona hasn’t woken up yet either. I’ve been alternating between housework and visitations to the tree house. This is where I write in the journal; this safe haven that Kurogane-san built for me where I feel connected to something larger than my own weaknesses._

_At first, I could doze off for a few hours before I would force myself to wake up once I feel that persistent tug in the darkness of sleep, urging me to fall and fall and fall…_

_My powers may have been running low, and my telepathy may have been inaccessible for weeks now, but I know…I just know they’re only hidden in the depths of my subconscious, taunting me to exercise them and feel that…lust…that sheer malicious joy I get when my magic takes over everything until whatever scraps of humanity I have left continue to dwindle…_

_I can’t allow that foulness into my life again; to give in to that temptation and become the very man that loathed and belittled and took advantage of his friends—_

_—to become that_ ** villain ** _._

_But it’s a battle that I find so exhausting and often disheartening because it’s a battle I know I have no choice but to face alone. Yuuko-san is no longer around to guide me back in the right path and…thinking of her…writing about her… **HURTS**_

_I love her even when I didn’t know much about her before. Somehow I feel that it was only because I didn’t know her that well that made me love her in the first place. It feels like I should have made most of the time she was still here with me—I should have told her that in the months leading to her...her…_

_I should have told her that maybe the reason why I’ve been dreaming about her so vividly—why we’ve been having conversations in dreams—was because we were bound; inescapably connected, inevitably bound forever._

_I wonder…_

_…was I in love with her? Is that why I couldn’t let her go—why I refused to?_

_Did I love Yuuko Ichihara that way?_

_Would I even know the difference between that kind of love and the others? Is there…really any other kind? Are my feelings for her comparable to how I feel about Himawari? Or Doumeki._

_Or Kohane._

_I think Kohane is turning a year older in a few days. She could probably bake her own cake by now. I wonder if she would invite friends…or have a big party. She should. Kohane deserves to live a normal life like a normal girl. And be happy._

_It’s moments like this when my recovery towards betterment becomes particularly grueling. I already know what I’m leaving behind and why I had to leave it behind. But I still revisit all these moments in my past and make up scenarios in which I actually made the right choice, and therefore became happy._

_In these imagined scenarios, I told Himawari how I felt about her. Or I told Doumeki that he was a good man and the most loyal and loving friend anyone could ask for. I told Kohane that she made me brave and that if I could I would watch her grow up not from a distance but as a constant presence in her life._

_I’d tell Yuuko that I loved her in all kinds of ways; as her unwilling apprentice; as her surrogate son; as a man would a woman—and regardless of however I love her, what mattered in the end is that I did. I do. I always will._

_Writing this is therapy. It’s cathartic. It’s enlightening._

_But it still hurts. It still doesn’t make anything feel better._

_I just feel so alone and trapped like a prisoner of history._

_I can’t write anymore. Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow again. Or in a few days. I just have to keep writing. I promised Syaoran. Besides, aside from attending to wishes, there is nothing else to do. The irony? Nothing in my life is worth writing about either._

_For a life doomed to longevity and near transcendence, mine surprisingly feels like just a series of short, faded moments—like snapshots._

_And this journal happens to be the album that hopefully compiles them._

_But I dread that one day, someday, I’d flip through these entries again and would not recognize them as a composition of my life at all, but rather read them as stories written by a stranger. And I think…that wouldn’t be such a bad thing now, would it?_

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

Doumeki stared at the page before him for a few more minutes, his fingertips tracing specific words and phrases here and there, pronouncing a few of them in silence. He closed and then opened the diary again, pausing back to that passage. He rested his palms on top of the pages this time, and closed his eyes, listening to his steady heartbeat. The rest of his room was silent and dark except for the lamp illuminating his desk where he was presently reading. All Doumeki could see were Watanuki’s words written in front of him.

His thoughts. His feelings. His loneliness. His regrets.

And out of instinct—this pesky old habit of his—Doumeki wished, _wished with everything he’s got_ , that he could bear it all for Watanuki...bear it all even if the weight would crush him. At least he would have died to ensure Watanuki’s survival.

Earlier today he stopped by the shop to check up on the seer. He didn’t feel like staying long, however. As relieved as he was to be back in Watanuki’s life, Doumeki still doesn’t have a single clue as to how he could fit back into it, given the length of separation that lasted for almost a year. It had been that long since the two of them actually had real conversations together. There was no way either of them could go back, but at the same time it still felt too soon—too sore—to move past everything just yet. They’re stuck in purgatory…if there was consolation though, it’s the fact that at least they’re stuck _together_ and were willing to work their way from there.

“Please take it,” Watanuki said as he handed Doumeki his journal. “There are so many things that happened to me, and I revealed a lot of these things by writing them down here. And I think you should read them. You deserve to.”

“Are you sure?” Doumeki tried not to sound too nervous or too curious as he eyed the notebook which Watanuki has offered. “You’re comfortable letting someone else read about your private thoughts?”

“All I have is time and privacy,” Watanuki explained, “And to be honest, I would like to have less of both from now on. I’d like to start by sharing pieces of myself with you which I kept in the dark for so long. I want…” he smiled in that tired way he had been doing lately, “…I want you to know me without any kind of filter or inhibition.”

Doumeki just nodded and slowly reached out for the notebook.

“Besides,” Watanuki added, “You’re not just someone else. You’re my friend.”

He placed his other hand on top of Doumeki’s. The indescribable warmth emanating from their hands touching gently like that was too much that Doumeki pulled away a few seconds later, taking the diary with him. Watanuki just sighed.

 _His friend,_ Doumeki thought to himself now as he turned to the next page of the diary, _it was all I ever wanted to be until it wasn’t. I just want him. I want to be with him forever._ He squashed that thought away. _And now I can’t._

Some wishes were never meant to be granted anyway.

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

Kohane was sitting by herself on the clear grass under the shade of the temple’s most massive tree. She had drafts of her thesis paper strewn around her as well as other manuscripts for research. It was only when Doumeki was walking closer to her that he began to notice the state of her preoccupation. She was sitting on a foot stool while the papers around her were impeded by several differently shaped rocks to keep them from flying away. She barely looked at Doumeki as he approached.

She came home rather late last night, and explained to Doumeki that there was a group project in one of her science classes that she had to work on, and the other members chose someone’s house to deliberate on the plans. She was unable to text Doumeki about it because she forgot to charge her phone the previous night, and hesitated to use her classmates’ phones since she might be giving them access to his number. He accepted the explanation readily, but had to ask if that vicious girl Endo was one of the members. The fact that Kohane had gotten pale and could barely look at Doumeki confirmed the answer for him. He wanted to spare her from any more bullying and scandal, but knew that he would only encourage more damaging gossip concerning their supposedly innocent student-thesis adviser relationship. As far as everyone knows in the university, Doumeki is dating Misaki Kuwabara. And they all plan to keep up that charade.

“Hello, Shizuka,” Kohane finally looked up from the book she had been reading to acknowledge his presence in front of her. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Not really,” he replied as he sat next to her.

“Are you sure?” she asked him again, peering at him curiously from underneath her thick eyelashes, “you seem like you want to tell me something. And I know you well enough when you’re stalling. What is it?”

Doumeki crossed his arms before him, glancing upwards the sky through the canopy of leaves that shielded it from view. He took his time, knowing Kohane wouldn’t mind. Finally, he looked across her and reached out to brush a stray of hair as he placed it behind her ear. Kohane just smiled at him and took his hand to squeeze it gently. He stared at her right now in all her fresh sweetness and beautiful allure, and knew he could never bring himself to break her heart. He chose her and he has never regretted it, not for a single moment, not even when it was easier to blame her—he never succumbed to that hurtful delusion. Kohane Tsuyuri is the woman he wants to marry someday. There may be an overpowering sense of obligation to that, but there was also love. What he felt for her was steady and dependable. What they had and what they could build in the future are worth choosing over whatever childish fantasy he may still harbor for a man who exists in another plane of reality.

The trouble was Kohane believed in the same things as he had, and though she wanted the same things together with him, she has also yet to close the chapter of her life where that same man dwelt and haunted her dreams even after the break of dawn stirs them from each other’s embrace. There were times these past few weeks when Doumeki would catch Kohane lying awake beside him, just staring into the windows near their bed. He never asked her because he didn’t have to. There was a space between them where Watanuki should have fit right in, if only he had chosen them and not his ghouls. Doumeki would just pretend to go back to sleep and leave Kohane to the privacy of her worn-out hopes for the one they both equally couldn’t get over, no matter how much conversation and sex they’d share with one another.

Kohane must have sensed his melancholic streak, and frowned visibly in response because she knew that only one person would be capable of dampening Doumeki’s moods indirectly or otherwise. Still, she waited for him to explain himself.

There was no sense beating around the bush. Doumeki took her hands inside his, staring at the prominent difference in their sizes, as he said:

“He let me back inside the shop. It happened three nights ago.”

Doumeki couldn’t look at her, not yet at least, so he went on instead, “He told me everything. He told me about what I already knew and what I didn’t. And I…for the briefest second, I didn’t want to forgive him. I don’t how to do it. And then…”

He paused, swallowing the tears before they threaten to come and closing his eyes. Kohane squeezed his hands in a manner that he knew was her way to show him that she could be strong for the both of them. It made Doumeki open his eyes and meet her gaze at last. It made him speak up once more.

“And then I remembered,” he said, “I remembered why we were doing this—why we decided to endure it together here in the present and someday in the future. I remembered our covenant; that we did it for him as much as much as we did for us. We did it in the hopes he will come back to us…”

He paused only to press her hands to his lips, murmuring, “And now he has, Kohane.”

Doumeki looked back into her eyes and saw them flicker with several emotions he couldn’t name fast enough before they passed by one after another. Finally, a smile settled on her lips which trembled even as she tried her best to keep it on. She gently tugged his hands towards her face so she can stroke her chin with his knuckles. With her eyes closed, she told him: “I want to see him.”

“And you will,” Doumeki reassured her. “He said he is ready. There is so much more to say that were left unsaid from the last time—”

Kohane visibly stiffened upon mentioning it. Doumeki cupped both her cheeks now and added, “Don’t worry about it. He told me everything already. And what he did to you—what he put you through—those things are mostly the reasons it’s harder to forgive him than I thought. But if and when he starts to make things right by you...”

“Don’t,” Kohane murmured as she put one hand on his chest while the other brushed his hair from his temple, “Don’t bear that burden too, Shizuka. It’s mine, and I have no qualms carrying it myself. Whatever conflict Kimihiro-kun and I have is between us. And whatever conflict you and Kimihiro-kun have is between you.”

From the moment she said it, Doumeki became aware once again of the terrible weight of the egg still hidden away in the confines of his pocket. He did his best to forget about it for now because right now she needed him for herself, and he can’t let her down. She allowed her tears to flow down, dampening the skin of his hands where they still held her face. Kohane wept silently and Doumeki stayed there by her side, cradling her through the sorrow, making it his own.

“The three of us,” she said, “…cannot remain so entwined with one another like this. All these strings of fate that tie us cannot keep on getting so jumbled and frayed.”

Doumeki could only look into her eyes as he wiped the heat of her tears for her. Finally, he answered in a resolute voice, “I understand. Whatever you need from me…whatever it takes—I’m always here to provide it for you.”

“Thank you,” Kohane leaned in and pressed her lips on his cheek, breathing out before breathing in again. She then wrapped both arms around his shoulders and tightly held on. “You were…so good to me, Shizuka. I could never ask for a better man by my side. I only hope I have done right by you all this time.”

“You have,” Doumeki enveloped her fully in his arms this time. He inhaled the scent of her hair, and tried to commit every part of this beautiful girl in his heart in case the day comes when only memories of her are all that is left for him to hold onto.

“When…” Kohane’s voice trembled as she asked, “…when can I see him?”

“You can see him today if you want,” he told her as he loosened his hold on her so he can pull back and smile at her. “He will be waiting. He told me so.”

Kohane started tearing up again, only this time it was because of sheer joy and relief. It was as if the sun itself is rising in her features the moment she started to smile again in a way Doumeki has forgotten, and often doubted, that she still could.

“Then I am ready, Shizuka,” she declared with that smile. “I’m going to see Kimihiro-kun again.”

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

With a bemused, contemplative smile, Watanuki stared at the bottle of scotch which Mokona was precariously balancing for a few more agonizing moments before Maro and Moro decided to intervene so they could help him pour the contents into the pair of glasses. Watanuki didn’t immediately reach out for his, but instead watched Mokona gulp down his share first. Maro then poured him another as Moro turned her gaze to Watanuki’s direction and asked why he wasn’t drinking his glass.

“I will in a moment, dearie,” Watanuki answered her as he reached out to pat her head. Moro brightened up her smile and then fell closer to him so she could embrace him as tightly as she could. Instantly envious about this, Maro walked over to them and encircled her own arms around Watanuki’s shoulders, squeezing him. The two girls started arguing which one of them is hugging Watanuki the best, and the seer could only stay still and let them enjoy their playful banter for the moment.

Mokona was sipping his scotch more calmly now as he looked at Watanuki for several seconds before he asked, “What’s on your mind, kid?”

“Nothing of note, really,” Watanuki answered. Maro sat close to him this time so she can start hugging him around the hips just like Moro is doing now. In turn, the seer cradled the two girls close as if he was their mother. “I think about Doumeki again, only because he’s back in my life. I think about Kohane because I miss her, and I wonder if she would want to see me again. I wonder about what I could tell her; what else is there to say…” he sighed and shut his eyes. He didn’t open them even as Mokona replied to him.

“I have no doubt that those things occupy your thoughts, but I think there is something else too, and maybe we have to talk about it.”

“You’re referring, of course, to my most recent customer.”

“You recognized her from somewhere else, didn’t you?”

Watanuki only hummed and loosened his hold on the girls for a moment as he opened his eyes. He met Mokona’s gaze openly and said, “Kohane happens to know her since the woman works at her university as one of the professors. And as we both know, there are no such things as coincidences.”

“Something else is the matter, though.”

“Yes,” Watanuki replied, pausing before he added, “And no.”

“Care to elaborate?” Mokona pushed the glass of scotch towards Watanuki’s reach, and the seer stretched a hand to take it. He watched the contents swirl as he moved the glass back and forth. It caught the reflection of the moon across where they sat, and it mesmerized Watanuki as he explained further to his friend.

“I’ve seen through her mindscape and lifted a few fresh memories from there,” he said. “Rest assured that I did not physically cause her mental stress, nor did I forcibly view her memories without her consent. She was blaring them aloud as we talked, and you know that I’m still working on my defenses at that point, so I could not block her out even when I wanted to.”

“You saw something then?” Mokona asked carefully. “Something you think merits a discussion? Come now, Watanuki! I’ve known you long enough to ascertain that something is worrying you immensely. I’m more than willing to listen. Did we not agree that I shall aid you in your recovery? So anything you think might inhibit you from that journey should be addressed readily.”

“I get that,” Watanuki admitted. He gulped down the scotch first before he continued. The alcohol burned his throat in an almost pleasurable way, and it made his stomach coil beneath him as well. “It’s not as if I was trying to keep it to myself. I just didn’t know how to talk about it, let alone what to say about it.”

“Then let us begin by disclosing what you saw.”

“Well,” Watanuki rubbed a hand on his temple as he gestured for one of the girls to pour him another glass. Moro let him go, and reached for the bottle so she could do so. He went on explaining, “I saw Misaki and Kohane together. The memory was dim and I could only really glimpse Misaki’s perspective of the event. She was looking at Kohane against the darkness of the night. Kohane looked…alluring to her.”

Mokona said nothing about that, and his silence urged Watanuki to keep going.

“She kissed Kohane. And I believed Kohane kissed back. Misaki’s chest was tight. I could feel it on my own,” to demonstrate, Watanuki pressed his free hand on his chest and sighed. “The strange thing about telepathic connections is how strong the second-hand emotions that come along with them. The surge of these feelings Misaki had harbored for Kohane is quite staggering. I almost…I almost felt like I was going to be sick because those same emotions could have easily become my own.”

“And, in a way, they are, aren’t they?”

Watanuki blinked. “What do you mean, Mokona?”

“Oh, dear boy, I think you know what I mean.”

The seer frowned. “Speak plainly.”

Mokona sighed this time before he answered. “Kohane is important to you, Watanuki. You have loved her in the purest sense because she was the closest thing you associated with family. But you know she’s no longer a child. And you know that what she felt about you hasn’t stayed sisterly. It eventually grew into something else. She has—come on now, would you rather refuse to talk about this reality, Watanuki?” he asked once he saw the seer shaking his head rather stubbornly as if he doesn’t want this conversation to go forth to that direction.

“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” Watanuki stared into his full glass, avoiding Mokona’s eyes as he spoke, “Doumeki and Kohane have decided to be together, and I agree that it’s for the best. Whether or not I still feel something for Doumeki—or whether or not I also have some vague romantic interest on Kohane—which _I do not_ ; in the end it’s not as if I could be with either of them, given the circumstances.”

He took his time sipping the scotch, relishing the bitter taste of it on his tongue. He knew that Mokona was just watching him, and the attention was unnerving, given the context of their conversation. Watanuki could feel his cheeks growing hot.

“You finally know how Kohane feels about you—”

“What she _felt_ about me, you mean.”

“Did you ever stop loving Doumeki?” Mokona shot back, silencing Watanuki instantly. “Was there a moment even after you decided that you should never see him again that you automatically stopped being in love with him?”

Watanuki was blushing tremendously now. It’s humiliating to hear a third party’s opinion on the matter. He almost started choking on his scotch. He settled it down the floor and then eyed Mokona apprehensively. “Why would you bring that up right now? You know that’s exactly what I’m trying to do these past few days ever since I’ve confirmed that Doumeki is with Kohane. I need to respect their relationship—”

“The same way Misaki Kuwabara is trying to respect it, no doubt.”

“Do you think our experiences about this are comparable then?” Watanuki crossed his arms before him. Meanwhile, Maro and Moro were now just spectators watching the conversation unfold between them. “Do you think that, just as Misaki did, I would act upon my feelings and force myself on Doumeki as well?”

“Has the thought ever crossed your mind?”

“Not until you brazenly brought it up! And no! I would never do such a thing.

“I’m sure that even Misaki Kuwabara thought she had enough self-restraint,” Mokona smirked at him, though not unkindly.

“So what are you suggesting now? That I don’t see Doumeki anymore because I may give in to my lesser instincts again, and destroy the trust that I’m trying to re-build before it even starts?” Watanuki was getting irritated. “But what’s the point of proving that I could change—that I have changed—if I don’t put it to test? If I start pushing them away in my life again for the second time, then what would that accomplish? They may never forgive me again if I do that!”

“I wasn’t suggesting that,” Mokona shook his head. “Geez, why do you jump to such dreary conclusions, Watanuki? You need to stop being such a damn pessimist!”

“Then stop aggravating me and making me paranoid!”

“Do you prefer that I keep treating you like broken glass, and walk delicately around you, boy? No chance! You need to stop thinking that you can break any moment.”

“And what’s the alternative?” Watanuki clenched his fists. “That I’d once again feel strong and powerful and able to conquer anything?”

“What is so wrong about that?”

“You of all people should know why I can’t be like that again!” Watanuki couldn’t help the way his voice trembled as he said that.

“So you’re still afraid of your powers, huh?” Mokona asked quite insensitively.

“What do you think?!”

“And yet without them you simply revert to being a whiny, crippled _adolescent_ who would rather feel sorry for himself than start solving his problems!” Mokona jumped high enough to hit Watanuki on the top of his head. The contact didn’t hurt but it was alarming nonetheless. “What you need now is to find a balance between power and vulnerability, Watanuki. It’s never about choosing one over the other. It’s about learning to embrace both aspects of yourself—the man _and_ the monster.”

“Why would I do that?” Watanuki pulled his kimono closer to him and fingered the blue sash around his waist that held it together. “Why would I have to accept that there is something beastly in me as well? Shouldn’t I just bury it instead?”

“No, you fool!” He hit Watanuki again. “You see it’s only when you acknowledge your shadow that it doesn’t win over your light, Watanuki.” Mokona answered him earnestly, “It’s only when you learn to live with your very worst actions that you can always choose to do your best when the situation demands it.”

Watanuki was quiet for a while. Mokona waited as well as the girls.

Finally, the seer asked, “Is that why I feel so lost and aimless right now? Because I’m trying to erase something in my being that I should instead learn to control and use only when necessary?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Oh,” For a while, Watanuki just looked down at his palms as if they belonged to someone else’s. “But what happens if I can’t control it again?”

“That’s what I’m here for, boy.” Mokona hopped closer to Watanuki and placed his flipper on the seer’s cheek for warm consolation. “You’ll never go through this transition alone. I will teach you and guide you to make the most of your powers. In time, as you grow older and more experienced, you will learn which situations require you to be merciful; and which ones require you to be cruel.”

“I see,” Watanuki finally allowed himself to smile as the relief washed over him immediately. Still, he can’t help but narrow his eyes as he said, “You know, Mokona. You didn’t have to wait so long before you told me any of this…”

“What? You think I have to force-feed things to you all the time? Is that the only way you can learn? Don’t be an idiot, Watanuki.”

“Don’t be a idiot, master!~” Maro started hugging Watanuki again.

Moro followed suit. “Master should not be an idiot!~”

“You heard the girls!” Mokona added in a surprising cheery note.

He then looked Watanuki in the eye and said, “Sometimes the only way out is through your own darkness. There are still plenty of things to do from here on. Are you ready for them?”

“Yes,” Watanuki nodded once.

“Well then,” Mokona replied. “First, you have to understand something about Kohane first.”

The seer could only blink in response.

“It’ll make sense, don’t worry,” Mokona reassured him. “I have a feeling that she’s coming, kid. So you better steer yourself right and remember to listen…” he placed his flipper on Watanuki’s chest, “…to your heart and to hers. It might surprise you to find out what they both have in common all this time.”

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

 

 

He came to her in a dream. There weren’t any physically details about the dream but rather it was one with collective sensations that Kohane recognized because she had been waiting for him to call upon her. And so, when the dream came, Kohane opened her eyes and got up from bed. It was seven in the morning, and the streets were bright and as clear as the skies above. She had only put on a sweater over her pyjamas as she trudged the familiar pathway leading to the wish shop. She felt so joyous to know that it was once again open for her to travel. For a while she could pretend that nothing has changed. She could pretend that her spirit hasn’t been broken plenty of times by the very same boy who put it back together in the past.

But he was no longer a boy as she was no longer that little girl either. Once Kohane stepped inside the wish shop’s threshold, and the eager hands of Maro and Moro pulled her to guide her inside, she knew everything is different. She couldn’t pretend or wish any of this away—and why would she?

Standing before her, wearing a blue and black yukata and slowly waving a paper fan on himself, was Kimihiro. He looked decidedly paler and lankier than she last remembered. There was no vibrant glow of youth or the color of robust health in his features in spite of the fact that he cannot age. Kimihiro stopped fanning himself so he could gesture at her in a manner so bereft of energy or real purpose that Kohane wondered if he could even discern that she was indeed here and not an illusion.

This was the man she could not stop loving; the only one she had always wanted to belong to forever. He was also the one who rejected her and rebuked her access to his life, who had hurt her in a way she did not believe could ever be repaired. But she wanted to believe otherwise, and that was why she took a few steps closer with a smile on her lips even though there remained a big thorn lodged in her chest and couldn’t be taken out.

“Good morning, Kimihiro-kun,” she greeted him as if it was just another encounter, like they were never estranged for a year, and she did not fear him.

“Kohane-chan,” he spoke her name softly and the sadness that touched his handsome features made her stop on her tracks. She couldn’t breathe. He smiled back at her and said, “I’m so glad you could make it. I’m sorry it took so long to guide you back here. But I’m very…grateful that you made time for me.”

There were simply no words. She just stayed where she was and watched him with every caution and regret. As if he understood, he also didn’t bother taking a few steps closer to her and instead lowered his gaze, continuing to speak for the both of them. “It really has been so long. I don’t expect you to just…move on from the shitty things I did. Besides, as much as you know, Doumeki is also still struggling to trust me again. I could only imagine that you would be just as hesitant, and probably more so. It’s…understandable.”

He nodded his head as if to validate his own reasoning. “But I want to believe that your very presence here right now means that you want to…you want to start over. And I would like to earn that right with you—whatever and however long it takes, Kohane-chan. I truly am—so sorry…so very, very…”

He squeezed his eyes shut and Kohane could see him swallowing a lump in his throat. When he opened his eyes again, he met hers. “I’m sorry. And words are wind, so I know that my apologies will remain hollow unless I show in my actions from now on that I’m willing to change—that I have changed. I hope that in time you will forgive me, and start trusting me again…”

Kohane decided to interrupt him this time. “I never hated you.”

She couldn’t believe she found her voice like that. If she could, she would have stayed silent for as long as she was there before him. No words conceived by man could ever hope to convey how intense her feelings have been for him, and how they will always remain as such.

Upon hearing her speak up, however, Kimihiro was immediately silenced. He could only afford to blink wearily as he waited for her to say something else. So she did.

“I never once didn’t want to forgive you.”

He breathed out this time, but kept his peace nonetheless.

She kept going, feeling braver for each second that passed. “I could never bring myself to have any ill feelings toward you. And perhaps that’s unhealthy. Perhaps I should be angry. But I’m just not.”

Kimihiro was now squeezing the wooden handle of the fan he was holding as he kept their eyes locked on each other. His eyes were devastatingly expressive. Everything around them is teeming with tension and secrets.

Surprisingly calm, Kohane clutched her hands together in front of her and explained in a soft tone, “You were… _my world._ I just didn’t know how much space you took up in my life until you ripped it away from me. And for a year now, I was simply compensating for what I’ve lost—for that void in me that was you, Kimihiro-kun.”

His voice shook as he whispered her name, but she shook her head and took a tentative step back as she kept talking. “I've imagined seeing you again, and thought about what I could say. And in all those scenarios I readily told you that you are forgiven and you are loved. And that I’m okay. I’m still here, and I want to continue being here for you if you’ll have me. And then—and then we would—”

The tears did come now, but she didn’t stop unloading her aches even as her voice was failing her. “But you shouldn’t be forgiven. You shouldn’t be loved. And I—I am NOT okay!” The anger overtook her before she could stop it.

“Kohane-chan…”

“I was here for you, and I only wanted to be here for the rest of my natural life, dedicating it for the sake of you—and you did not only push me away…you tried to destroy me! You took my love for you, and you cast it aside as if it came cheap! You made me feel that I was _dirty_ and replaceable!”

She covered her face with her hands now and sobbed, unable to go on. Her fingers felt like they are pricking her skin and her throat is so tight she could suffocate.

Kohane could hear him say, “Please…”

She ignored him as he went on, “…tell me how to fix this. I’ll do anything…I’ll be anything. Please, Kohane-chan…”

After what felt like hours, Kohane finally collected herself and wiped her tears. When she looked up to meet his gaze, it was sure and unwavering.

“You can’t fix what happened a year ago,” she told him. “I don’t want you to fix it. You hurt me and Shizuka. That should never be forgotten or forgiven.”

Kimihiro looked as if he was about to cry as well, but Kohane steeled herself and told him. “But I will give you a second chance to do better. Don’t try to erase the pain that you caused in the past because that has already been done. The damage is there. What…what you and I could do instead is…is make something work better here in the present,” she paused, sighing aloud before she asked him. “Do you understand me, Kimihiro-kun? We could never change the past. I don’t want us to.”

She took a few steps closer to him now, not breaking eye contact.

“But I want the present to be different—to be better.”

“Yes,” he replied in all earnest desperation as he met her halfway. “Whatever and however long it takes…”

Without preamble, Kimihiro wrapped his arms around her and she allowed it to happen. He was more sinewy and a lot frailer than she remembered, and when she placed her hands just underneath his ribcage, she could even feel the bones protruding unpleasantly. Has he been eating? Was he not taking care of himself? Kohane wanted to get mad about that. _But at least he doesn’t smell of opiates anymore…_

Kimihiro was still holding onto her as if he couldn’t do anything else, and for a long time Kohane allowed it because there was nothing more to say either. She merely closed her eyes and held him up, afraid that if she let him go this time, her and Shizuka's biggest fear would come true, and Kimihiro Watanuki would just disappear.

Eventually, Kimihiro did let her go. When he looked at her again, she instantly noticed his eyes were puffy because he had been crying as he held her, and out of instinct she reached out and rubbed her thumb gently on one of his lids. Kimihiro just chuckled, and the sound was so real and nostalgic that she couldn’t help but smile. The thorns may still be digging in her chest, but being this near him again and seeing that he was starting to look like the boy she loved—Kohane would like to believe things cannot get any worse and may be on their way to get better.

“Do—do you want to come in?” he asked her.

Once the heaviness in her head had dispersed, she looked around and realized that they’ve been standing in the threshold the entire time since she arrived. Kohane felt her cheeks color as she nodded in silence, and let him hold her hand to steer her inside the shop. There were lamps and lanterns on the floors, making their shadows scatter everywhere like a canopy of misshaped phantoms hovering around them as they walked together. Kohane took in the rest of the changes in the place as she gripped Kimihiro’s hand. The doors were all made of wood now, but there were no knobs at all so one couldn’t actually close them. There are many walls made of cement, all white and clean as if they have been washed that way.

The lounge was just as bare with only a clamp-shaped sofa in the middle of the room. More lanterns littered the way, red, pink and yellow in color, all either circular or rectangular. The light coming from the lanterns was strangely fluorescent white as if there were electric bulbs inside instead of candles. Kohane had to avoid stepping on any of them as she treaded across the big space of the lounge.

Kimihiro let her hand go at last and asked her to sit on a cushion he placed just three yards away from the clamp-shaped sofa. Up-close she could see that Yuuko’s red-and-black kimono was draped across it as a blanket. Kimihiro sank into the sofa comfortably enough as if he had done it so several times now. Kohane knelt on her haunches on the cushion underneath her and stared at him for a while before he decided to speak.

“You don’t have school today, do you?” he asked pleasantly. It’s weird that he was now attempting to converse normally with her again as if it was just another meeting, but Kohane supposed that if they are truly going to start over, they have to establish some verbal rapport again, no matter how seemingly insurmountable this space dividing them after all the trials and heartbreak they have put each other through.

“Just for today, my classes start after lunch,” she answered him.

Kohane paused before she asked, “Do you want me to stay with you for a while?”

“I wouldn’t want to keep you if you have other things you need to do.” Kimihiro looked troubled by that suggestion. She noticed him fumbling at his yukata.

She shook her head to dismiss his anxiety as she replied. “Nothing like that. Don’t worry about it. I offer because I want to be here for a little while longer.”

He was mincing his words when he asked, “Is Doumeki okay about this?”

Kohane sighed, recognizing where this inquiry was headed. She was not sure she wanted to talk about it just yet, but now was a better time than ever. “I take it that he had told you about us?”

“Yes,” his voice was soft and neutral. “I’m very happy for the both of you. I think it’s a blessed thing that you have each other now.”

“Yes,” Kohane clutched her hands on her lap. “It is, Kimihiro-kun. Shizuka and I have been…very blessed together indeed. These past seven months—they’ve been bearable because he and I endured it as a…as a couple.” The words sounded wrong to her ears but she left them as that.

“Wonderful,” Kimihiro sounded less convinced himself. “That’s good news indeed.”

Kohane only nodded stiffly as she admitted rather sullenly, “I'm sorry but...I don’t know…what else we can talk about right now.”

“Neither do I,” Kimihiro let out a nervous chuckle and sank further into the sofa as he did. “I’m almost afraid to say the wrong thing.”

“How are…” Kohane hesitated to ask but she knew she had to, “…how are your powers? Your telepathy?”

Kimihiro visibly winced but he managed to reply to her all the same. “They were inaccessible for a while, but since seeing Doumeki four nights ago…I think I regained their use. And that includes my telepathy.”

“Can you read my mind again?” she felt her body go numb as soon as she dared to ask it.

“No,” Kimihiro’s answer was quick. “Not unless you want me to. Even then, I wouldn't even try it on you again. Not after everything.”

Kohane just looked at her hands. “I’ve noticed that…you aren’t smoking.”

“I’ve quit that too,” he said. “Mokona has kept the smoke-pipe. It’s all for the best.”

“Okay,” she answered. “How does it feel then?”

“Without my opiates, you mean?”

Kohane met his gaze from across the room. “Without magic in general.”

“Honestly?” Kimihiro crossed his legs and then placed his head on his palm as his elbow burrowed on the sofa’s left armrest. “I feel crippled in a lot of ways, and I think it wasn’t a bad change at all. I needed…to be cut off from it for a while.”

“And now?” Kohane watched him carefully. “Now that you have regained some of it back—how do you feel?”

Kimihiro just blinked at her before he replied. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“You had tremendous power before—powers that could manipulate people,” Kohane explained as delicately as she could, not wanting to hurt or offend him. “And you abused them. You used them against your friends as well, and on that poor woman, Hisako…I guess what I’m trying to get at is…what will you do about these powers now, knowing that they have once led you astray?”

Kimihiro was silent for a long time. His gaze was lowered as his fists clenched above his lap. Kohane didn’t mind waiting for his response.

He looked at her at last and measured his words as he replied. “I told you, didn’t I? The last time you were here—before I banished you—I told you about the bargain I struck with the Jorougumo and Hisako-san, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” Kohane said, “And I also asked you then if you regretted doing any of it. You told me you weren’t even sure that you felt bad.” A pause. “I guess what I’m asking is—how about now? How do you feel about it this time?”

“Like shit,” Kimihiro’s voice croaked. He might start crying, and Kohane honestly didn’t know how to react to that. It was odd because she can sympathize with him to a certain extent, and believed that he was genuinely remorseful for his actions. And yet, at the same time, a part of her can’t stop feeling wary and uncomfortable. Was seven months of estrangement enough to forget what a person was like, and what made you fall in love with him in the first place?

But Kimihiro held himself together long enough to explain to her, “I could never reverse the damage of that deal. Hisako-san got revenge on her rapist at the cost of her unborn child. And I—I attacked the Jorougumo for my own selfish vendetta. That will forever be a tainted aspect of my reign as a wish granter. It was a sin that could never be absolved.”

Kohane frowned, feeling all the more hopeless. All she could do was ask him, “Have you heard from either of them since?”

“No,” Kimihiro admitted, shaking his head, looking more morose. “I’m too scared about it. With my telepathy back, I could contact Hisako-san one of these days. I could also lower the barrier and allow the Jorougumo entrance to the shop but—”

“Don’t do it,” Kohane warned him. “It won’t appease your guilt. Besides, the Jorougumo is dangerous, and you just declared her your foe. I don’t think it’s smart to risk confrontation with her again, even if you only want to make peace with her.”

Kimihiro only nodded in compliance.

Kohane slowly stood up as she continued to talk, “I think you should focus on the things you can still change, Kimihiro-kun. And I also want you to know that this time I won’t let you decide if you think it’s too much for me.” She started walking closer, still maintaining eye contact with him. “I won’t allow you to make decisions on my behalf just because you think you know what’s best for me. If I decide to stay, I’m staying. If I decide that I want to help you, you’re going to let me.”

Once she reached him, she took his fist and eased its stiffness until she was able to interlace their fingers together. Leaning down, she pressed a kiss to his temple and said, “I don’t want you to be alone anymore. Neither does Shizuka.”

She pulled back and looked him directly in the eye. “So please don’t cage yourself again. I’m here. I just…” she could feel her eyes watering but she ignored it, “I just want to be here for you again, that’s all.”

“Kohane-chan,” he reached out his other hand and cupped her cheek. “I don’t really understand this. I’ve hurt you so much and yet…and yet you still think I’m worth saving. How could you be this kind and loving even after the hell I’ve put you through? Kohane-chan, I almost—I almost killed you.”

“But you didn’t and that’s all that matters to me.” Kohane interjected. “And I love you. I’d love you anyway in spite of everything.”

As soon as she heard herself speak those words aloud, it occurred to her that as muddled as her feelings have become in these long months of separation, they were still hers to feel and to share, and right now she needed to be strong for herself and Kimihiro. She needed to help him, but this time it doesn't have to mean it's going to cost her a regrettable amount of loss. 

“Kohane-chan…” Kimihiro was looking up to her as if she wasn't here at all again. Frightful of this, she leaned even closer to make sure he could see her and make him trust in her realness and protection.

“There was never a day I didn’t. There is never going to be a day that I won’t.”

Kimihiro took her face with both hands now and leaned closer so he could meet her height from where he sat. “I love you too, Kohane-chan,” he whispered.

Words are wind, she remembered well. All her life she had wanted to hear him say those words to her since she was only a little girl, enraptured by his compassion and enticed by the prospect of becoming more to him than just a close sibling he had always seen her as. But Kimihiro loves Himawari Kunogi as well, but was able to set her free anyway. He loves Yuuko Ichihara so consummately that he gave up his future to wait for her. And then there was Shizuka whom she might marry...what of Shizuka now? Did Kimihiro ever tell Shizuka again this time how much he is loved?

And what of her? How much does Kimihiro truly love her, and in what capacity? Why does that make all the difference to her right now?

She could only smile as she held his face back for herself, running fingers through his pale cheeks as if to memorize every blemish. For now nothing matters but this nearness of him, this newfound completeness.  _This is real. I’m not dreaming this again. He is here._

Kohane was going to close the final distance between them then with a kiss. She was going to allow the dam to burst and let the river of emotions overflow, but in the last moment she stopped herself. She looked at Kimihiro Watanuki in his mismatched eyes and realized he was never hers to claim or belong to. He had always been meant for something far deeper than fleeting human relationships. He had always belonged to serve a greater purpose neither she and Shizuka could ever understand. She had lost him, and he wasn’t even hers to lose. Kohane started tear up some more as she was slowly suffocated by this tragic epiphany.

Kimihiro had to stand up so he can hold her through the outburst, even though he couldn’t possibly know for himself what she was being tormented with in that moment. Or perhaps he does. Perhaps he had made telepathic connections with her again, and Kohane frankly didn’t mind it because she’s incapable of explaining in words right now just how shattered everything had become.

“Hold me,” she managed to say between sobs. She wound her arms securely around his withered frame and begged him, “Take me to you, and please don’t let me go…”

Even then as Kimihiro held her, she knew it would all have to be for naught.

 

 

 

**xXx**

 

_Mirror Mine,_

_I’d think of you every now and then, often to wonder what you’d say if you are still here. Sometimes I’d also imagine you never left at all, and in doing so I could perform my duties better, and endure whatever streak of loneliness that comes. I miss you deeply, and the only thing that comforts me is what you told me before you said goodbye. Do you still remember? You told me: “_ **I’m a part of you as you are a part of me.** **I carry you with me as I go,** **and I stay with you even when I leave.”**

_These promises have illuminated my darkest nights, Syaoran, but it also made me worry if anyone could ever do the same for you. And that is why I write to you for the first time since you left the shop, and will have this letter delivered to you as soon as possible to wherever corner of the multiverse you are currently in. This letter will find you, and I hope it finds you safe. I have to say that my intentions of writing this are a tad self-centered as well. I hope you wouldn’t mind me asking you something that has weighed on my soul for quite some time._

_I simply want to know how you’re able to cope with an existence that has punished you with the absence of the person you love the most. I want to know if your struggles have been just as futile as mine, and even so, do you still choose to bear it all not just for yourself but for her? How do you begin to take that step forward, knowing that each step would mean being farther away from Sakura herself? I ask these things because I want to learn from your example yet again. I believe I might fail in enduring my own hardship because at this moment I can’t stop thinking about Doumeki and the many ways I want to let him know that I am still his to claim, to take—to love and to hold. And it’s wrong. He has someone else now whom he had chosen to be with instead of me, and it’s a person I value greatly as well._

_I hope it wouldn’t sound as if I am diminishing or invalidating your own agony of not being able to be there for Sakura, to hold her and tell her in person that you love her, but I do believe you might be the...’less unfortunate’ in our arrangement. Isn’t it easier for you to take those steps forward when there are so many worlds you can run to in order to escape the pain and longing, rather than be me—trapped in one place but where the person I love is just within distance’s reach?_

_I know it sounds terrible for me to compare our situations as if they are measurable, where one is more surmountable than the other—because of course neither is. But do you ever allow yourself to think about the prospect of Sakura finding someone else? Falling in love with this somebody and having that person love her back? I know that at some point you must have had. So how do you feel about it? You feel relief, don’t you? Only because you want her to find happiness even if it’s not with you. You want someone to be there to share her joys and sorrows with because you can’t. You pray to all the gods and all the magic in the universe, don’t you? That she is loved and she is in love—even if you can’t be either of that for her anymore?_

_I’m sorry to write you these things, Syaoran. I’m sorry if I suddenly made you contemplate about your own heartbreak. Believe me when I say I wasn’t being hurtful or malicious. It’s just that these awful contemplations are all I have these days, and I want to know—I need to know I am not as alone as I feel._ _Write back to me when you can, using the familiar I have sent this letter with. I shall wait eagerly._

_Yours in Common Ground,_

_Kimihiro_

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

_' Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not._

_Time takes it all and bears it away,_

_And in the end there is only darkness._

_Sometimes we find others in that darkness,_

_And sometimes we lose them there again. '_

\- Stephen King

 

 


End file.
